Watched a CSI episode last night in which a killer was found not guilty of the murder of his wife.
Horatio and his team were convinced he did it (turns out he didn’t) but the guy could not have been put on trial again even if he had.
Why?
Surely if proof positive of a persons guilt is found after a trial then he/she could be brought to trial again, the first verdict being declared null because of the lack of evidence at that trial
Nope – not in the US, anyway.
The state gets one (fair) shot to convict, per crime. There have even been cases where people have publicly confessed after being acquitted and suffered few if any consequences.
There are circumstances where jeopardy may not apply – such as if it is proved that a judge is corrupt or there was some other extraordinary circumstance.
In addition, if you beat a state murder rap and new evidence comes to light, the feds might charge you with a civil rights offense, which is a different crime. This has happened in a few cases stemming from the civil rights era where racist juries were loath to convict a white person in some cases.
ETA: Do not rely on the plot of the really bad movie Double Jeopardy to clarify this issue. 
Surely to God if a person confesses after being acquitted then that person can then be charged with all manner of things.
Perjury
Witholding evidence
Concealing a crime
and so on.
Seems to me that if a person admits to a crime after being cleared of it then he/she deserves to have the book and its uncle thrown at them
Incidentally, I don’t think I’ve seen the film you mention
Perjury only if he testified in his own defense; and even then the penalties for perjury are not much compared to those for murder. Lying to an investigator and obstruction of justice are possible charges which could be brought.
Good. 
The inane plot of that film involves a woman who is framed for her husband’s murder. It turns out the husband faked his own death and set up his wife to take the fall. So when she gets out of prison, she vows to kill him for real, since, by the movie’s twisted logic, she can not be convicted for the same murder twice.
What the misinformed writers fail to realize is that these would constitute two completely separate crimes and jeopardy does not come into play.
(She could, however, probably successfully argue for her first conviction to be vacated on the grounds that a second conviction for murdering the same person is sufficient evidence to indicate that the first murder did not take place.)
I should clarify that this does not apply to mistrials, where the state has the option to re-try the defendant. Only a completed trial counts.
Something similar happened in the Rodney King case. The cops who beat King were acquitted locally, and the Feds, not liking that result, stepped in with a civil rights violation case.
What about “Perverting the course of Justice” or conspiring to do so
Jeez, there must be something the state could get a person who has admitted their guilt on.
If there isn’t all I can say is that it’s a piss poor judicial system that will allow a self confessed killer to go free
Many former monarchs of your country thought the same thing. Unfortunately, they tended to abuse the state’s limitless prosecutorial power, which tended to nullify the significant bias in favor of the defendant in criminal matters. Recognizing that repeated prosecutions were far more often used for evil than good, the writers of the Bill of Rights included the double jeopardy clause in the Fifth Amendment.
It’s worth noting that some form of double jeopardy protection in England has been part of the common law since the Magna Carta and possibly earlier, and has only recently been significantly abrogated.
So in effect an acquitted killer can be re-tried in the UK.
What about in the USA?
If he’s acquitted, he can’t be tried again for the same crime unless he was not actually in jeopardy (the judge was bribed, the jury was threatened/bribed, etc.)
But, as explained above, he could potentially be charged with other crimes, generally not including lesser included offenses for which he was acquitted. For example, you can’t charge someone with second degree murder if they got acquitted of first degree murder for the same act.
The questions you ask are substantially covered in my Staff Report on double jeopardy.
I understand that some people in the UK have confessed to crimes after being acquitted, but in the US this is almost unheard-of. In fact, I can’t think of any time I’ve ever heard someone do this. In colonial times, acquitted defendants were frequently tried over and over again until the prosecutor found a jury willing to convict them. They were also punished for refusing to testify against themselves. Those protections are in the Constitution for a reason.
Defending yourself (whether you are guilty or not) cannot be considered perverting the cause of justice. It is justice.
How does the double jeopardy come into effect in terms of appeals? If the defendant is found guilty, he has a right of appeal, if again found guilty he can try to appeal to SCOTUS - about correct?
Can the DA appeal a not guilty verdict to a higher level? Or does he really get only one trial? In Norway both sides has the right to appeal to a higher court if unhappy with the verdict/sentence. (And after that to the Supreme Court which might or might not hear the case). It would seem a bit lopsided if the defendant in the US has “two chances” whereas the DA has only one, if this is indeed the case.
If I remember the argument correctly, the reason the state has only one chance to convict relates to the power and resources available to the state vs. those available to the individual. If the state could appeal a not guilty verdict, a vengeful prosecutor could bankrupt the “not guilty” person, simply by pursuing appeals ad infinitum.
If an appeal is lost, the defendant is not again found guilty; the original guilty verdict simply remains in force. A defendant can not appeal to a federal court unless he was tried in a federal trial court to begin with, or there is a question of federal law regarding the state-level prosecution. The individual states all have their own appellate court systems to deal with appeals where there is no federal question.
In the US and most other common-law jurisdictions, a not-guilty verdict can never be appealed by the prosecutor, except for extremely unusual circumstances.
In fact, a defendant in the US has essentially infinite chances, but appellate courts have wide discretion in choosing which appeals to hear.
Correct me if I’m wrong.
So in the USA a person can be acquitted by a federal court and then tried by the state, say Texas.
If acquitted again he can be tried in another state, Iowa, New Mexico, etc
And so on in all 50 states until a guilty verdict is returned :dubious:
Certainly not; none of those other 49 states would have jurisdiction for a crime that occurred in one state.
Generally, no. He can only be prosecuted in the state in which the crime was committed.
However, if you had a serial killer who committed murders in several states, he could be tried in any of the states. Thus if he’s accused of murdering someone in Texas and is acquitted, he can be then tried for murdering someone in Iowa.
In addition, prosecutors of serial killers usually only try them on selected victims in their own state. If you killed X, Y, and Z in Texas, the prosecutor will try you for killing X. If you got off, you can still be prosecuted for killing Y (different crime).
I should have figured that out :smack:
I forgot that US states govern themselves in a sort of semi-autonomous manner
It’s important to remember that not only are the states semi-autonomous, in the US system they are considered actual sovereign entities, which all voluntarily entered into this crazy arrangement to form a federal government. So, just like if you committed a crime in France you would not expect to be tried in England, state crimes in the US are prosecuted by the state with proper jurisdiction. Jurisdictional fights do sometimes occur (such as a multi-state serial killer as mentioned above). We even have formal extradition between states (although unlike international extradition, in practice it is never denied.) And states sometime end up suing one another (one of the very few times when the US Supreme Court has original jurisdiction.)