Is it true that if you are found guilty of a crime that would provide an alibi for another crime, the double jeopardy law automatically protects you from prosecution of the other crime once you are found guilty of the first?
For example, say I commit murder on a particular night… but I somehow leave enough evidence and get a really incompetent defense attorney (or even just plead guilty) to a robbery somewhere else.
If I am found guilty of a robbery that has established my presence in a different location at a particular time (even if I really was truly innocent), would that protect me from prosecution of the murder that I ACTUALLY committed?
ETA: Need answer fast!!!
Just kidding. It was actually a plot point in a video game so I wanted to know how cromulent it was.
IANAL (and never regretted it). I can’t imagine the law working quite that logically. It just isn’t done that way.
If you are accused of robbery in Cucamonga and murder in Waukegan on the same evening I can’t imagine a conviction on either one would legally immunize you from being tried for the other. The conviction might provide a fine alibi, that might well be enough to convince the second jury to acquit. And it might even convince the second prosecutor to drop the case. But I can’t imagine you’d have a double jeopardy defense against being tried.
It would not surprise me if it were technically possible for you to be tried and convicted of both.
I’m just WAGging here, of course. But law is a logic unto itself.
There’s a classic Law & Order episode where two guys are suspected of a murder, but each accuses the other of pulling the trigger. It’s obvious that both were involved and one of them did it, but there’s no evidence that proves which one it was. So wily McCoy takes advantage of a defense motion to sever the trials, and advances a separate theory of the crime in each trial, convicting both of being the shooter at the same time, a physical impossibility.
No idea how practical that scenario would be in real life, but I thought it was pretty clever.
Senegoid, your response makes a certain amount of sense.
However… is that really fair, from the perspective of the defendant for The State to be able to find you guilty for two mutually incompatible crimes? How could The State say, “You are guilty of both crimes and will receive punishment for both, even though it is beyond reasonable doubt that you could have committed both.”
Even if it’s not a matter of Double Jeopardy, and just entered as a piece of evidence… it would seem the judge at some point would have to order the jury to find him innocent. And then throw out their verdict if they find him guilty anyway.
Apples and oranges. This scenario may make for a defense strategy in one of the crimes, but has nothing to do with the double jeopardy clause of the U.S. Constitution.
A judge can dismiss a charge or set aside a guilty verdict. But I’ve never personally heard of a judge ordering a jury to come to a specific verdict. I don’t even know if that would be legal.
Innocence is no bar to upholding a jury conviction.
Yes, it’s legal; it’s called a directed verdict. It’s done in situations in which the judge determines that no reasonable jury can submit a verdict to the contrary.
In a Michael Connelly novel, it was also ordered after a murder case filled top-to-bottom with gross prosecutorial misconduct.
The first answer, by JKilez, is spot on. Double jeopardy only prevents a second trial if the first result is “not guilty”.
The prosecutors in Cucamonga and Waukegan really couldn’t give a flying fuck at a donut what their counterpart is up to. You can be charged with both crimes. Presumably one of them has you in custody and gets to trial first, gets a verdict.
Then the second prosecutor has to prove beyond reasonable doubt that you also committed the next crime. Presumably a competent defence lawyer could get some serious mileage out of a parallel conviction, but then the evidence that convicted you for A should also in some way indicate that you were not at scene B at the right time. If you are convicted nevertheless, then presumably the details of conflicting convictions should make good grounds for an appeal. Irony would be appealing both and winning both appeals because of the other conviction.
But to summarize,(IANAL) there is no magical principle in law that says two courts cannot reach contradictory or conflicting decisions. That’s why we have appeal courts. Besides, how obviously contradictory would verdicts have to be? Who other than judge or jury after hearing all the facts could say “There’s no way you could have done Both A and B”?
Yes, but in 30 years in the criminal justice field every direct verdict I’ve observed (and it doesn’t really happen often) was done by the judge him/herself. After the defense moved for a direct verdict of not guilty the judge would either do it or not, not go through the motion of still having the jury still assemble for a verdict. I can’t present a cite right now, but I recall a case where a judge did order a direct verdict of not guilty upon the jury and it helped the prosecution to appeal on the grounds that jury members were (intimidated? Under duress? I forget what the argument was) and the prosecution won the argument in appeals. IIRC correctly the case became insanely convoluted because of this. Instead of just dismissing the case, issuing a direct not guilty order, or setting aside the eventual jury verdict, what the judge had done became a massive headache for appeals (State Supreme???) courts.
I wish I could remember that case. IIRC there was something else about it that was real strange as well.
Wait… HUH? If a jury found a guy innocent… directed verdict or not, the prosecution CAN’T appeal, can they??? Wouldn’t that be… breaking… double jeopardy?
If there are what they argue are “procedural errors” they can. This, AFAIK, almost always stem from a ruling from the judge on the case. But there can arguments stemming from interpretation of law, and/or rulings also.
Prior to the concealed weapons permit law passing, there was a case in Wisconsin where a business owner argued that his conviction for carrying a concealed weapon in his own place place of business violated his right to keep and bear arms under the state constitution. Wisconsin law at the time had no provision whatsoever for non-law enforcement to carry concealed weapons at the time, even thought the state constitution had a clause for the right to bear arms.. The state supreme court agreed with him (Hamden v state). Later on a bar owner argued in court that his arrest for CCW in his truck violated his right to keep and bear arms under the state constitution and the Hamden decision as he was using his truck to transport money from his bar to the bank (Fischer v Wisconsin). The judge agreed and proceeded with an order of direct verdict of not guilty. The DA appealed to the state supreme court and won. Eventually Fischer was convicted of CCW.
So is a conviction for a crime at a certain time treated legally as a ‘finding of fact’ that another court has to accept?
eg “it’s indisputable that XXX was at such and such a location at this time because another court found him guilty of a crime that involved him being there?”
The doctrine that governs the OP’s case is not double jeopardy but rather something called “collateral estoppel” or, in plainer English, “issue preclusion.” Basically, this principle says that once an element of a claim has been litigated to a decision between two parties, neither of those parties can re-argue it in a later case.
Traditionally, the doctrine developed in civil cases. It also applies in criminal cases, but I’m not immediately familiar with the details of its application. I think a plea in the first case would trigger the doctrine just like a verdict, since you would have to allocute (make a statement admitting) to the elements of the crime in open court.
However, if the prosecution can show that you committed perjury in the course of being convicted in the first case, you probably can’t invoke collateral estoppel in the second case, since the issue wasn’t genuinely litigated the first time.
Also, if you pleaded to robbery in a case in state A, I don’t think state B is necessarily barred from arguing that you were actually committing murder at that time, because state B was not a party to the first case.
Wow that’s enlightening! So there is a kernel of truth to the plot of the video game.
For more info on what happened in the game:
Two people were trying to claim credit for a particular robbery, so they could be found guilty. This guilty verdict was supposedly supposed to give them an iron-clad alibi in a murder case, both of whom would have been high suspects. Only one of them actually committed the murder, but the other guy was SO sure that he was going to be set up to take the fall, that he tried his hardest to be found guilty of the robbery so that he would have that as his defense.
Sounds like, as long as the state were the same in both trials, there would be some truth to the idea.
What about Full Faith and Credit? If a California court finds that I was in Los Angeles on April 14, 2009 at 10pm PST committing a robbery, wouldn’t that finding of fact preclude a murder trial in Miami accusing me of murder in Miami on April 15, 2009 at 1am EST?
Wouldn’t res judicata come into play? “Your Honor a court of competent jurisdiction has established that I was committing robbery at the exact time I was supposedly committing murder in Miami. This Court must accept that issue of fact as settled and not allow any arguments that I was in Miami.”
I was thinking res judicata as well. If you consider it from the perspective of a person that is really and truly-o innocent of all the charges, it adds insult to injury to not only convict them of offenses that they didn’t commit, but to convict them of offenses that are logically mutually exclusive. “Yeah, you raped that girl in a hotel room in Denver while you were driving a stolen truck across West Philadelphia while sneaking across the US-Mexico border with a shipment of cocaine.”