One of the many things I’ve learned from the SDMB is that in America you can have Double Jeopardy. And beyond that, you can be sued in the civil court.
This seems to me to be fundamentally unfair: the accused has to be found Not Guilty on all occasions; the prosecutors need to succeed only once. And then there are the cost.
So, how does the American legal system handle this fundamental unfairness?
You cannot have double jeopardy in criminal matters.
The civil action is different. And it is perfectly reasonable to be found liable in a civil action and not guilty, given the different burden of proof (balance of probabilities as opposed to beyond reasonable doubt).
That depends on how you’re defining the term. It’s actually not allowed in the US except for certain exceptional circumstances.
I’m not sure what to make of this part - it’s not that you can have double jeopardy in the U.S., but rather that a lot of situations that lay persons might think are double jeopardy actually aren’t, like criminal prosecutions by dual sovereigns or subsequent civil trials.
Really? In other threads I have read, people can be separately prosecuted by both Federal and local authorities.
I have grave difficulty with this.
If the Op is from the UK (Land of Hope and Glory) it should be noted that Double Jeopardy has been revoked in England (not Scotland) for certain serious offences where new evidence arises. It is also possible to follow a failed criminal prosecution with a civil suit (though less easy and less common than in the US.)
Double jeopardy is explicitly banned by the U.S. constitution, but it only applies to criminal matters. If the conduct that brought about the criminal charges could also be grounds for a civil suit (and I can think of no crimes against persons or property that wouldn’t also give rise to civil liability), the victim is free to sue the defendant, even if the defendant has been acquitted of the criminal charges (see O.J. Simpson).
It’s somewhat a matter of opinion, but I don’t see any “fundamental unfairness” with this.
First of all, the criminal and civil justice systems serve completely different purposes. The criminal justice system exists to punish wrongdoing, to deter future wrongdoing, and to protect the public from criminals, as well as to deter vigilantism. This is seen as vindicating the rights of society as a whole, and compensating the individual victim is not really an objective. Because criminal charges can result in jail time, or even the death penalty, the standard of proof is extremely high - guilt must be proven “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
The civil justice system, unlike the criminal system, is not concerned with punishing wrongdoers or casting moral judgment on their conduct. It’s simply about compensating injured parties for harm caused by others. Because only money is at stake (you can’t file a civil lawsuit asking the court to throw the defendant in jail, or put them to death), the burden of proof, while still favoring the defendant, is much easier to meet. In most civil actions, the facts alleged by the plaintiff only need to be proven by “a preponderance of the evidence,” which basically means you only need to convince the factfinder that the facts you allege are more likely than not to be true.
It therefore follows that the prosecution in a criminal case could fail to meet the burden of proof necessary for a conviction, without precluding a private plaintiff from proving the same facts to a much lower standard of proof.
Generally as a political issue. If the people feel that the government is acting unfairly it will elect new representatives.
This is only technically true. You can’t be retried for the same crime but you can tried repeatedly for seperate crimes that are all fundamentally the same.
For example, if the police have evidence that you held up a liquor store and killed all eight people who were in the store, it’s common for a district attorney to only try you for the murder of one of those victims. That way, if you’re acquitted at this trial on some techicality, the DA still has the option of trying you for one of the other victims.
That would be a different crime, hence not double jeopardy. Similarly, if your conduct is a potential crime under both American and Canadian law, the fact that you have been acquitted in a court in the U.S. would not be a defence in a Canadian court.
That’s an example of what I said above. Technically you’re not be tried twice for the same crime. But one act can be two seperate crimes - one federal and one state.
For example, suppose you broke into a bank and used dynamite to blow up the safe. The state might charge you with robbing a bank. The federal government might seperately charge you with violating federal regulations on the use of explosives.
That’s exactly one of the situations I was talking about - it isn’t double jeopardy. Double jeopardy prevents you from being tried twice for the same crime or a lesser included crime by the same sovereign. If a different sovereign (e.g. another state or the federal government) tries you for a violation of its own laws, it’s not double jeopardy.
My query still holds: the accused is being prosecuted twice, and to maintain his or her freedom must be acquitted both times. Prosecutors need to succeed only once. That is fundamentally unbalanced; how does the American legal system compensate for this?
There’s nothing to compensate for - the legal system doesn’t view it as “unbalanced” (to the degree that a system can hold a view). What steps do you believe should be taken?
I don’t really see what you’re missing here. If you commit two crimes, how many criminal charges should you face? One or two?
If you commit two crimes, one of which happens to be a state crime and one of which happens to be a federal crime, how many charges should you face? One or two?
If both of these crimes were committed in the course of the same criminal action, does it matter? The answer in the US system is no, it doesn’t matter, both charges can still be brought.
You seem to be under the misapprehension that one can be charged with a crime, acquitted, and then charged with the same crime again. That is not true. The federal government’s jurisdiction is criminal matters is fairly limited. For example, when Timothy McVeigh was caught after blowing up a federal building in Oklahoma City, an event which killed 168 people, the federal government charged him with the murders of just a handful of people. Why? Because murdering a federal agent is a federal crime, but the rest of those murders weren’t. Had McVeigh been acquitted, or had he been convicted but not executed, the State of Oklahoma would have been happy to try him for the other 150-some-odd murders. The fact that these two separate crimes occurred as part of the same act is irrelevant; there is no double jeopardy involved.
This is highly fact dependent. Even if the second prosecution was permitted under the double jeopardy clause, the prosecution might be collaterally estopped from trying the case again.
Ashe v. Swenson has a good discussion of this.
Now I’m not exactly sure what you’re asking.
You can’t be charged with the same crime twice in the U.S.
There are some circumstances where it may, at a casual glance, look like a person is being tried twice for the same crime, but this usually happens when a single course of conduct constitutes multiple crimes.
For example, suppose that Bob kills Steve with a car bomb that was set in a car that Bob stole. Obviously, the prosecution is going to charge Bob with murder, and getting that conviction will be its first priority. But suppose that Bob is acquitted of murder. Maybe Steve’s body was vaporized, and the prosecution couldn’t actually prove that he was dead (it’s a hypothetical, work with me here).
Should the prosecution be precluded from charging Bob with the theft of the car that he put the bomb in, or violation of a multitude state laws regulating the use of explosives, or for property damage to nearby buildings?
It’s true that Bob is being charged multiple times as a result of the same course of conduct, but he’s not being charged with the same crime more than once. The distinction is sometimes subtle, I’ll admit, but it’s crucial.
Double jeopardy is not allowed.
It’s difficult to understand what you’re getting at with this sentence. Yes, you can be sued in civil court. But the doctrines of res judicata and collateral estoppel (issue preclusion) generally prevent the same issues from being tried twice in civil court.
By not allowing it.
Here’s where it gets tricky. At the first trial, the prosecution tried to prove that Bob set a bomb, the bomb exploded, and as a result Steve died.
The jury comes back with an acquittal.
Now, if they acquitted because they believed Bob set the bomb, but didn’t believe that Steve died, no problem.
But suppose the jury acquitted because they didn’t believe that Bob even set the bomb. Now the government comes back in a second trial and tries to get a second jury to believe Bob set the bomb. THAT is fundamentally unfair, isn’t it?
So they’re prevented from doing so, not precisely by the double jeopardy clause, but by the principle of collateral estoppel.
Right. I should have made it clear, but I was operating under the assumption that Bob would be acquitted of murder, precisely because the prosecution couldn’t actually prove that anyone died. I was assuming that the jury believed that Bob set the bomb, or didn’t reach the issue.
The thing is to understand how the system works. First of all it is heavily time dependent. This is a good and a bad thing.
For instance, Jan steals Marcia’s car and runs over her. Jan is very unlikely to have TWO trials where she’ll be charged with stealing and another trail where she’s tried on assult.
This is good and bad, depending…
Suppose the jury finds her not guilty of assult. But the jury may feel she probably did it but they aren’t willing to convict her beyond a resonable doubt. That same jury may say “Well we can’t find her guilty to theft either, but since, she should’ve been found guilty of assult, we’ll convict her of the lessor charge of theft.”
This is how jury works. Or the jury may find her not guilty of assult but come back as a hung jury on the theft. The judge may say “Oh this is a waste of time and dismiss the charge.”
Can they bring Jan back on charge of assult? No, but they could on theft? Well maybe, it depends on THAT particular case. You can find some cases where it’s been ruled a dismissal is the same as an aquittal, and you can find other cases where it’s been ruled perfectly OK. It depends on the unique factors of that case.
The OP seems to be confusing JUSTICE with FAIRNESS. The two are not the same.
And this leads to comic results often. Ask any district attorney who will say “My job is to find the person guilty. That’s what I’m paid for.” He doesn’t say "My job is to research the case and find out if he/she is guilty. No, he says, “Finding the suspect is the cops job.”
The cops will say, “We find people likely to have done it, and it’s up to the courts to decide whether they are innocent.”
That is my big beef with the judicial system, it’s about convictions and deals, not about finding the truth. It’s also about money. Those with deep pockets are favoured, especially in civil suits.
I am reading a book on the TV show “The Simpsons,” and one of the writers was describing how unfair Fox, Gracie Films and Jim Brooks and the early writers in terms of residuals and the like.
But that same writer points out, “Yeah I sued FOX and settled out of court for $800,000 one time cash payment. Today I should have about 25 million, if they were fair about it.”
He then points out, “But then again, I have fellow writers that sued Fox (and others) in 2005 and here it is 13 years later and they STILL have nothing but a lawsuit that keeps going on and on and on…I on the other hand had $800,000 cash to invest.”