Has there ever been an instance where someone was found not guilty of a crime and then publicly admitted guilt after acquital? Double jeopardy would apply, so I assume one could theoretically go to the press with the truth after the trial, no? (Subsequent civil action notwithstanding.)
Go to bed, O.J.
Couldn’t the judge overturn it or the lawyers appeal?
Once a person has been acquitted of a crime, that’s the end of it. They cannot be taken to court again over the same charge. It’s enshrined in the Bill of Rights. Also, it forbids multiple punishments for the same offense. Although things such as forcing child molesters to register with the police after prison apparently don’t qualify as a second punishment for the original crime.
If you are a moron Hollywood scriptwriter, you will write a movie wherein you claim that it also means that if you are falsely convicted of a crime, you are legally able to then commit that crime after serving your time.
But my commerce teacher told me of a case in England where the police just couldn’t find the body. They took the guy to trial though. He was acquitted. He went to speak to the media on the courthouse steps and proceeded to describe how he had cut her up then dumped the victim in the English Channel.
If a person were to admit to a crime after a trial in say a state court, there is no reason they could not be charged again for the same crime in federal court, another state court, or trial court. At least in the US that is; I don’t know the laws in other countries.
See cases
Bartkus v. Illinois
In particular, I want to point out the bit on seperate soverigns:
And just for kicks, the case of tribal courts is found in US v. Wheeler.
I would think there is a way to retry on the basis of new evidence in the same court as well. But I don’t know the details of that.
-Short
IANAL but,
Dave Courtney, East end villan, organiser of the security at Ronnie Kray’s funeral and template for Vinny Jones’ character in the film Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels was tried for killing a man. I’m not sure the if the charge was flat out Murder, or a lesser one like Manslaughter or Unlawfull Killing or something, but after his Not Guilty verdict.
From his autobiography Stop the Ride, I Want to Get Off.
Apart from increased police attention thereafter, he was seemingly never troubled again.
On the other hand in Howard Marks’ autobiography Mr Nice, I’m sure there is a situation where either Howard or one of his friends is prosecuted twice for the same act but under a different statute of law. First tried for Possesion with Intent to Supply and found not guilty, then later charged with conspiricy to move the drugs, or Knowingly Concered for example. I’ll look for a good quote from the book later giving specifc details later. I’ve got to go to a job inetrview soon and I don’t really have time right now.
I suspect while you might get away with it, it would probably not be a good idea. I maintain that the money was only resting in my account, and I’ve never seen that white powder before in my life officer, don’t even know what it is. 
The British government are proposing removing this “double jeopardy” from English law, meaning that you can be re-tried if “significant new evidence” arises. I would guess that a confession would be considered pretty significant.
I don’t know if this will ever come to pass though, as the civil rights brigade claim that the new rules would mean that the police could bring cases to court with the flimsiest of evidence, knowing that they can keep retrying if they don’t get a conviction.
Wish I could reference this case…can’t find info…
Anyway…
There was a case brought against a man who was accused of murdering women, while other women watched, and while the man videotaped and photographed the murders. Obviously, he got much excitement from recording the event, not just on film, but through the eyes of a women he had bound and forced to watch him rape and abuse at least one other woman before he killed her.
Of course, he didn’t hang with the most reputable woman, so when the eyewitness managed to escape and tell her story, it wasn’t enough. Apparently, forensics wasn’t enough either, so the police conducted an intense search for the video and pictures. They went through his home, his business, car, etc…several times.
They came up empty.
He was found “not guilty”.
Within the next several months, the once-accused man moved out of his home.
The people who bought his house found the video tapes and photos under a false floor board when they went to renovate a room.
The videos showed the man mudering and abusing women, as described by the eyewitness. She was on the video too.
The man faced perjury charges.
No other charges could be brought against him.
Philster, was this on “American Justice” or “Investigative Reports,” with Bill Kurtis on A&E? It’s ringing a bell with me as well.
He was acquitted of mudering his girlfriend, Brenda Sue Schaeffer, in Louisville, KY (I live here. Anytime this man goes grocery shopping, it makes the news). He went before the grand jury and denied any involvement in her disappearance. He was acquitted due to lack of evidence. He then admitted on a live TV interview that he had, in fact, killed Brenda Sue Schaeffer. After his acquittal, he sold his house to pay his legal bills. When the new owners moved in, they called a contractor to pull up the carpet in the front hall. Upon doing so, he found a heating vent with no grate on it. Curious, he looked in, and discovered an undeveloped roll of film. He asked the new owners if they were aware of it. They said no. They then remembered who they bought the house from, and called the police. The film was pictures taken the night the Brenda Sue was murdered, of Mel Ignatow raping and torturing her to death. The police arrested him, and he was convicted of purjury. He’s done his time, and is now free in Louisville, KY.
Philster, Northern Piper, I believe you may be talking about the same case that I just mentioned. It happened in the town I live in.
Superdude, I just moved away from Louisville, but I was there during the whole Mel Ignatow incident. You’ve summed it up well, especially about how anythign he does tends to make the news.
I just saw a show about it recently, I believe it was in fact ‘Investigative Reports’ on A&E. So that probably is the case Philster and Northern Piper are remembering. It was a pretty good show, and I learned more actual details about the case from it than when I lived in Louisville.
Truly a despicable crime and a very disappointing situation all around. I’m sure the prosecutors were very frustrated at only being able to charge him with perjury. But I was never entirely sure why they couldn’t charge him with some other crime as well. Say, rape or assault or something (anything with a higher penalyt than perjury). I had always thought that double jeopardy was pretty narrow and you couldn’t be re-tried on the same exact charges for the same crime, but could be charged with other offenses stemming from the same incident. And if Short is correct above, why couldn’t they charge him in another court? Can anyone explain how this stuff really works?
Enigma and SuperDude: Yep - that’s the case for sure. A&E does a good job on these. I know from some local Philly cases that they cover the cases well.
Hey, some smart DA’s who know they might not get a conviction sometimes hold off a related charge. Like for Mel Ignatow, the could have skipped the rape charge, or kidnapping charge.
Has this happened before? I remember hearing a prosecutor recommend that in tough murder cases, you can hold off some charges in case there is evidence later. You can get him on rape and kidnapping (which is often “life”) if you can’t do double jeopardy on the murder charge.
Know what I mean?
IIRC (and, if you haven’t yet, I encourage everyone to read the book Double Jeopardy by Bob Hill), when he testified before the grand jury, he either had reps from both the state and federal levels, or the testominy was enetered into both courts. Then again, it could be something else that I’m not thinking of.
er not in the UK your not , in the UK the double jeapody law was removed , so a person can be tried more than once
or it is going thru the act of being changed , it was an item on the UK news a while ago i can’t quite remember it all
The dual sovereigns bit that Short mentioned is correct as far as it goes, but in practical terms it’s very limited. That’s because for any sovereign to try a defendant it must have jurisdiction over him. The criminal cases in which multiple sovereigns have jurisdiction rarely overlap. For a state to have jurisdiction, it must have some nexus with the crime.
For instance. Say Don killed Vicki. Both are citizens of Mississippi. The crime was committed in Mississippi. It was done by bashing Vicki’s head in with a rock that Don picked up from a stream in Mississippi. Mississippi would probably be the only state that could try this crime. Even if Don were found in Tennessee, Tennessee couldn’t try him because it has no connection to the crime. Now, if Don had kidnapped Vicki in Mississippi, driven her across the border, and killed her in Tennessee, both states could try him for at least part of the crime and possibly all of it.
The federal government is a little different. Its jusrisdiction is limited by the substantive laws it has enacted; laws that can only be enacted if they have some relation to the powers given to Congress in Article I of the Constitution. Congress can establish a post office, so they can have mail fraud statutes. Congress can regulat interstate commerce, so they have passed securities trading laws. I assume the drug laws are also passed under the Commerce Clause. The federal government, however, has no power to try regular murder cases. (That’s why Timothy McVeigh was executed for the deaths of 8 federal agents, not the 160 civilians he also killed.) In my original example, the federal government probably could have nothing to do with that crime unless it was related to drugs or organized crime or something else covered in federal penal law.
So although it’s true that double jeopardy only applies to the particular state that the person is tried in, that’s often enough because other jurisdictions often won’t have sufficient nexus to try the case themselves. Even if the federal government were to later pass penal laws that entered that field, they still couldn’t prosecute Don because that would be ex post facto. However, were Don to later admit his guilt, he could (depending on the circumstances) be prosecuted for perjury, conspiracy, health code violations (for improperly disposing of a body), and several other considerably more minor offenses.
–Cliffy,
law-school graduate
Nope - you’re wrong! In Scotland (part of the UK, but we have an entirely separate and quite different legal system) we still have double jeopardy.
In a case I prosecuted recently, the accused went up to one of the jurors who had just acquitted him and admitted the crime! Nothing we could do about it. 
heh you Scotts have weird things (fried pies , mars bars etc) heh i remember doing something relating to law in school a while ago and there is a verdict in Scottish courts
of unproven , which my lecturer said means everybody knows he did it just that the case or the evidence was not strong enough , and he’d be getting away scott (excuse) the pun free
i think this is what you call a hijack, but the question this thread makes me ask is, “so how do we go back and nail OJ?” or is it good enough that he is broke now and forever in the future and folks figure he isn’t worth causing race riots over to stick in jail?
feel free to ignore this!