In the case of F. Scott Yeager v. United States, 2008, former Enron Broadband Services executive F. Scott Yeager appealed his conviction on charges of insider trading and money laundering related to the collapse of Enron Corp., arguing that a previous jury's acquittal on fraud charges should prevent retrial on other counts where no verdict was reached (hung jury). The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Yeager, stating that the Fifth Amendment's Double Jeopardy Clause does protect a defendant from retrial when a jury has returned inconsistent verdicts by convicting him or her on some counts while acquitting him or her on others based upon the same facts during an earlier trial. This decision overturned lower court rulings which had allowed for re-prosecution.

In the dissenting opinion for F. Scott Yeager v. United States, Justice Scalia argued that the majority's decision was inconsistent with previous rulings on issue preclusion and double jeopardy principles. He contended that acquittals should not be given more weight than hung counts in determining whether a retrial would violate the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment. According to him, an inconclusive verdict does not necessarily mean jurors agreed on defendant’s innocence; it could also indicate they were simply unable to reach a consensus about his guilt due to insufficient evidence or other reasons unrelated to factual findings. Therefore, he believed that allowing such interpretation would undermine jury independence by forcing courts into speculative inquiries about what jurors might have decided during their deliberations but failed to express in their verdicts.