In the movie Double Jeopardy, Ashley Judd’s character is convicted of her husband’s murder, but it turns out he faked his death, leaving evidence that would set her up. While she’s in jail, a fellow convict says that if it turns out he’s alive, she can then kill him with impunity, because she can’t be tried for his murder again, it would be double jeopardy.
As you might guess from the title, the whole plot of the film turns on this point, but it is false. While her conviction and sentence for the first charge would have been dropped, really killing him later (in another jurisdiction, no less) would have been a different crime. Hence no double jeopardy.
If I were a Hollywood film producer and was pitched a story whose title premise was based on a idiotic misunderstanding of a well-known legal concept, I don’t think I would have made that movie. (Well, not unless it gave me a chance to work with a babe like Ashley Judd…)
Granted, that was a pretty crappy movie, but I don’t understand why the premise isn’t valid. The Constitution doesn’t say anything about jurisdiction, it just says “nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb”. In the movie, IIRC, she served her sentence for the murder. By what legal concept could she be prosecuted again for the same murder?
But that’s just the thing, it’s NOT the same offense. She was tried and convicted for murdering Mr. Asshole at 8 AM in the morning, October 25, 1994, in Reno nevada. (I just made up that date and place, I have no idea what it really it.) When she gets out, she decides she can kill him now because of double jeopardy…nope, cause this crime would be murdering Mr. Asshole at 6 PM on December 3, 2004 in Carson City. Different crime.
Almost any movie that features medieval weapons and armor. Usually the time period is all wrong for what they’re wearing. The fighting is complete crap, they bang the edges of their swords into each other, and they act like swords weigh a lot.
Armor, depending on the period, weighed between 20 and 60 pounds. An extremely heavily armored man in specialized tilting armor might be carrying 80 pounds or a bit more, but he’s not expected to do anything except stay on his horse, not run 40 miles. A modern reinactor who does not have anywhere near the conditioning and training that a period warrior would have can still do the equivalent of run an obstacle course while wearing properly fitted armor. You can do somersaults in armor, jump, and probably even do flips if you’re acrobatic enough.
You can’t cut through plate armor. Period. You can bend it and possibly pierce it if you get just the right angle and enough force behind a properly reinforced weapon point, but there ain’t no way you’ll cut through it. You would cut for the joints in armor since those spots are less protected, but even that would be iffy.
Swords were light. People who have gotten the chance to handle museum pieces or good quality reproductions are shocked at how light they are. No one today trains daily in fighting with swords, but even the out of shape pot bellied guys who seem to dominate SCA ranks can still swing a badly balanced too-heavy piece of rattan for several minutes at a stretch while wearing armor that is over-heavy to meet modern ideals of safety, take a short break, and do it again for the best part of a day at a “war” event. Imagine what a properly conditioned knight could do with his well-designed sword and armor.
Sword fighting was fast and bloody. Picture a football or rugby game where there are no refs and the guys are all carrying sharp pointy things. That would be a pretty good model for an infantry battle. You don’t slam your sword into the other guy’s sword. The whole idea is to cut him, not hit his sword. You try to dodge, make him miss, take the blow on a strong point of your armor, or slide the blow if you absolutely must meet it with your weapon, but you’re mostly going to concentrate on cutting him in an inconveniently deadly or painful spot.
My favorite was from The Ice Storm*. (Spoilers below)
Frodo is frolicking about in the ice storm, sits on a metal guardrail, watches a power line collapse from the weight of the ice, then whip around uncontrollably until it touches the guardrail and kills him.
Downed power lines do not flail about like unattended fire hoses.
Another extreeeeemly common plot device is when a character wants to create a diversion inside of an office building, so he holds his lighter up to a sprinkler, setting off every sprinkler in the building. That would set off just that sprinkler or perhaps the sprinklers in that room, but not all of them in the entire building. There wouldn’t be enough water pressure to have them all go off, even if that were the case, which it isn’t.
That depends on how the system is set up. I have stayed in hotels that had it set so if the sprinkler was set off in a room, that entire floor, along with the floors immediately above and below it would also go off.
I accomplished the whole “get rid of a bully” thing with a lot of yelling and cussing before History class. Does that count? Ooh, ooh, does this mean my life is cliche’d?!? Just like on TV?!? OH GOODY!
This wasn’t even the first movie to use this premise. In How to Murder Your Wife Jack Lemmon actually uses this as a murder defense. Lemmon’s wife has disappeared and he’s on trial for murder. His defense is that she faked her death. His final argument is that if the all male jury were to aquit him, he’d then be able to find her and legally kill her due to final jeopardy laws.
I also wanted to add my voice to those sharing their “confront the bully” experiences. I managed to get a bully to stop picking on me in elementary school–I was in 5th grade, he was a big 6th grader–by confronting him with the threat of fighting back. He quit, not so much because he respected me, but because there were easier targets around.
In short, it worked similarly to the sitcom cliche.
I have not seen Double Jeopardy. Does her defense actaully work, because it is not unbelievable that someone could act based on the mistaken idea that Double Jeopardy applied.
Depends on the storm and the wind. I’ve been through several storms, ice-based and otherwise, where the downed power lines did, in fact, flail about like unattended fire hoses. Even the ones that came down primarily because of the weight of the ice.
However, I’ll agree with your statement if you’ll agree to rephrase it thusly: In the absence of high winds, downed power lines do not flail about like unattended fire hoses.
There’s zero wind in that scene. Even if there were, you can tell that they’re trying to indicate that the splayed end of the power line is creating some sort of “exhaust” or what have you that’s causing the thrashing.
It’s not really used as a defense. She’s told by a man-hating radical feminist jailhouse lawyer (Roma Mafia) she’s legally allowed to kill him because she can’t be convicted again for the same crime. When she does finally confront him, the cop tracking her, played by Tommy Lee Jones, tells the ex that, as a former ada, he can confirm that what she says is true.
It becomes a moot point later on because:
Once the ex is found, he tries to kill Judd, which in turn results is his getting killed in self-defense (another cliche). The argument could be made that the jailhouse lawyer just didn’t know what she was talking about, the Judd character believed her, and the Jones character was lying to help her. It would have been a much better ending, though, if she actually had murdered her husband and attempted a defense based on double jeopardy.
Well, even though it’s not true, Ashley’s BELIEF that it was true spurred her to go out and seek vigilante justice, which is what the movie is all about.
In the same way, many hookers and dope dealers in movies AND in real life WRONGLY believe that an undercover cop has to identify himself if asked, and many end up doing dumb, criminal things in the presence of cops, as a result.
I remember in an episode of “Dragnet” Sgt Friday (Jack Webb) relates the ‘horrors’ of LSD use by telling the Urban Legend of students who took LSD, stared at the Sun and went blind.
I looked this up on “snopes” and not only did I find the legend, http://www.snopes.com/horrors/drugs/lsdsun.htm
if you scroll to the bottom it states:
**Sightings: In episode #36 of Dragnet 1967, Sgt. Joe Friday makes reference to those poor kids in Santa Barbara who went blind from staring into the sun.
**
I saw a little of The Godfather last night, so I was reminded of this lie:
All ethnic people, especially Italians, have great singing voices. At any family gathering or occasion, they will get up and sing something either touching or super-energetic in their native language. This is especially true for old people.