I ask in GD because this has come up a ridiculous amount of times in Law and Order, and yet I can’t find a clear answer in most real-life resources. Obviously, rigging your trial (say, by bribing a jury member) has generally been found to invalidate double jeopardy.
But what happens if, say, the trial relies on a key witness who is murdered by the defendant, but the evidence of this does not surface until after any normal judge would have to dismiss the charges for lack of evidence. If the murder and who did it were discovered in time, judges may allow grand jury testimony to be read in the original trial. But if there is no evidence that defendant was involved that surfaces in time, defendants may get off scott free.
But isn’t killing or bribing a key witness as bad if not worse than bribing a judge or jury member in terms of rigging a trial?
Double jeopardy would still likely apply.
The act of bribing the judge or the juror removes the element of jeopardy from the trial itself. The act of killing the witness simply weakens the government’s proof against you.
It’s not the most clear-cut of distinctions, I grant.
Bribing a judge, though, might not necessarily alter the outcome of a trial, since a judge might not directly decide the outcome, but might instead toss out, say, a key witness. Often, a key witness or piece of evidence (that, say, the defendant hires someone to steal out of the evidence room) DOES determine the outcome: cases might simply be dismissed entirely.
But what’s the difference between bribing a judge to toss out a key witness vs. killing them yourself? Same effect, but the LESS violent and servere act is the only one the criminal cannot benefit from?
But suppose the prosecutor could show that the defendant killed a key witness against him, and therefore wishes to show that double jeopardy should not apply to the first trial where the defendant was acquitted.
Logically, in order to convince a judge to set aside the first acquital the prosecutor would have to prove to the judge that the defendant had in fact killed the witness. And if the prosecutor can do that, they don’t need to reopen the old case, they can simply prosecute the defendant for the new murder. Sure, the defendant might never be convicted for the first crime, but they’re still going to be sent to the chair for murder.
If the murder of the witness effectively eviscerates the government’s case, why does our theoretical killer worry about double jeopardy? The government can’t prosecute him for the first crime anyway, even if jeopardy were not in play.
Timing is an issue as well. The key witness would have to be killed after jeopardy attached, but before he testified. In a jury trial, jeopardy does not attach until the jury is sworn in; at a bench trial, it attaches when the judge begins hearing testimony. Since there seems to be little reason for the accused to worry about issues of jeopardy, why would he time the death so narrowly?
Sure, but the point is: why let someone benefit from rigging their own trial? That you might prosecute them later on for a different crime is certainly important, but why should that let them off the hook for the existing trial?
In many cases, the witnesses have already recorded testimony from the grand jury. I would say that if you kill a witness, you’ve pretty much forfeited your right to “confront your accusers” for that witness, and such testimony should be allowed in on top od double jeopardy being waved. It still just seems nonsensical that a trial would be considered “rigged” with no true jeopardy attached in the case of conspiring with court officers but not so when you conspire to destroy evidence or prevent testimony, particularly when the latter can involve even more gross abuses of justice.
Shouldn’t proof of a defendants use of murder, death threats, stealing evidence or whatever else at the very least not be rewarded by the normal proceedural protections, as if nothing had happened?