I’m sure this has been discussed before but I was wondering about the legal reality of a situation like the one in the film “Double Jeopardy”.
I haven’t seen the film but the situation is as I understand is:
A woman is found guilty of killing her husband and jailed. She gets out and learns he is indeed alive and had her framed. The premise is that she can now kill him and can’t be tried again because of the prohibition against double jeopardy.
My first thought is that this is a complete load of dingo’s kidneys in that she would not be tried for the same crime twice because we are talking about two completely different sets of events. Whatever recourse she has for haveing been unfaily found guilty, if any, is irrelevant to the new incident.
Is there any basis in reality for the premise of this film?
I’m not a lawyer in any way, but this is my take. First, the plot so many holes in it, but ignoring those: I think that in fact, no, she could not be tried for that crime again. She’d already been convicted, and she’d not be granted a pardon, just let out on parole. Now, since she violated her parole in order to catch the sleaze, if she killed him again, the parole board would simply put her back in jail for a parole violation. They’d probably never let her out again, as what she did on parole certainly showed that she is not sorry for killing her husband. This is what I understand would happen. While the double jeopardy rule does sound stupid in this instance…do realize that she’d already served her sentence for his murder, so even though she was wrongly convicted, and then killed her husband in a different case, they’d probably sentencer her to time served…with the exception of the parole violation, which would then probably keep her in for life anyway.