I just heard on the news that Texas had only charged her with the death of two of her five children. Why?
My guess is that since the only issue in dispute in the case was her mental state at the time of the murders (which is a very subjective issue that often turns into a battle of the expert witnesses), they wanted to “save” three murder charges so that if she were to be acquitted, they could try her again for the other deaths, hoping to get a conviction the next time.
If this is correct, then this leads to question #2:
Isn’t this double jeopardy? I mean, if I guy robs a bank, you can’t charge him for each individual dollar he stole. The five murders were clearly linked together; if she was (in)sane for one, she was (in)sane for all five.
I thought she was being tried for 3 counts, but anyway…
If she was acquited of capital murder, she probably would have been tried for something like “injury to a child” in the other cases. With that charge (which can carry a maximum penalty of life imprisonment) there would have been no chance of the death penalty being an issue.
And no, it wouldn’t be “double jeopardy.” A bank robber isn’t tried for stealing X number of dollars (each an individual crime), he is tried for the single action of taking (or attempting to take) property by force or threat of force.
Yates committed five individual crimes (two have been shown to be capital murder) by killing five persons. McVeigh was tried and convicted of 18(?) charges of killing 18(?) federal employees. The state of Oklahoma would not have been able to charge him for all 168 murders if he had been acquited in federal court (that would be 18(?) cases of double jeopardy), but they could have charged him with 150 cases of intentional murder.
Prosecutors routinely hold back on counts for multiple murderers (just as the pile on charges whenever they can).
It not double jeopardy if you’re acquitted of two murders and your tried again for the other three. It’d be the same for a bank robber – if you rob a dozen banks, you’ll be prosecuted on the four or five where the prosecution thinks they can make the best case. If they lose, they will consider trying you for the other thefts.
The argument is that there were five separate crimes. If you’re acquitted of murdering one person, you can still be convicted of murdering someone else.
I am not sure it is routine to hold back charges where the murders all occured in a single event. I would think that this is more common in the case of murders which occur seperately. It is hard to believe that skirting double jeopardy laws like this would not be considered an abuse of process.
Have you seen any case law upholding the theory that it is ok to retry for different offences which are essentially part of the same event like this?
Stealing a guy’s wallet at gunpoint is only one count of armed robbery, even if the wallet contains six twenty dollar bills. It’s not six counts of stealing a twenty, because the entire robbery was part of on e continuous transaction. But three guys in the alley, each forced to give up their wallets, are three counts of robbery. After each oine, there was an opportunity, even if only an instant, for the actor to stop what he was doing and leave. His commission of the additional crimes happened when he disregarded that opportunity and continued.
She was never “in jeopardy” – that is, jeopardy never attached – with respect to the uncharged murders. So nothing prevents the state from trying her for those, win or lose on the first two.
What’s a little more distrubing, although permitted, is the introduction at the first trial of the uncharged murders. In general, other bad acts are inadmissible. We don’t permit a jury to hear about uncharged bad acts because of the risk that they will convict on the charged acts out of general feeling the accused is a bad guy, based on the uncharged acts.
One exception to this soprt of evidence – 404(b) evidence in lawyer-speak – is when it goes to show a common plan, scheme, or motive. Undoubtedly it was this rationale that alloowed the jury in Texas to hear about all five deaths, even though only two were charged.
I believe that your view is incorrect, double jeopardy provisions do not apply to prevent a federal and state prosecution for offences arising from the same transaction.
It occurs to me that issue estoppel may be the more appropriate grounds for denying a subsequent trial for the other two kids. It generally doesn’t apply to criminal prosecutions but any case I have seen has been related to different defendants convicted under alternate theories. Had she been found NG by reason of insanity for instance I think there would be a good chance that the issue of her sanity at the time of the offense would not be open to further litigation between the parties.
I do wish minty would drop in and clarify the Texan law for us. There would be no problem whatsoever here with conducting separate trials for murders committed at the same time (in fact it could be damn good legal strategy), but “here” isn’t Texas.
The two counts of capital murder were for 3 of the children: one count for Noah (7) and John (5), and one count for Mary (6 months). You can see a bit about this from CNN here. The explanation from here was, “One charge covers the intentional deaths of two people in the same event or scheme; the other covers the death of a child under 6.” They saved the charges on killing the other two children, but they would not have been capital murder charges, AFAIK, which may be how they got around double jeopardy.
