Can two people be tried together? Bob and Carl are both accused of the same murder of Alice. Are they supposed to be tried together as one party in a single trial? be separately tried in two simultaneous trials? be tried one after another? or what? (2.) seems the most correct, as Bob and Carl are separate parties that may want different lawyers, etc.. But that also seems the most hairy path, since the crimes are obviously extremely related, and each case would rely heavily upon the other. As a separate but related question: if an entire family/group are accused of crimes, are they all tried separately, simultaneously, or what?
In the U.S., one trial can be held for multiple co-defendants, though prosecutors and defense attorneys will have reasons for seeking separate trials (If only to avoid having a scene similar to the on in Dark Knight where Harvey Dent has about 50 mobsters caught in one RICO violation plus their lawyers and the judge's simple question of &quot;How do you plea?&quot; is met with a din of responses.). The Defense's reason for this is that an individual may not have been a part of every step of the collective guilt and thus some charges might not be appropriate if it's an individual's guilt compared to a groups guilt. For example, the six police officers involved in the 2015 death of Freddie Gray at trial were all tried separately. The first trial was declared a mistrial over the hung jury, and two subsequent trial's resulted in findings of not guilty by a judge during a bench trial. The remaining individuals had charges dropped (The three officers who had yet to have trials plus the one officer whose trial resulted in a mistrial). One of the findings a running theme of the officers as individuals did nothing wrong, though had they been tried collectively, the results may have been different, since the individual trials meant certain facts couldn't be brought up as they didn't apply to the individual but did if they were tried as a group. From a prosecutor's standpoint, separate trials mean that you can use one suspect against the other and make a deal for lighter charges in exchange for testimony against a partner in crime. The U.S. legal system does allow for plea deals between the defense and prosecution (and while it's not the only nation that allows this, it's one of the few where plea bargaining is not viewed as a &quot;dirty&quot; tactic and is openly embraced (U.S. attorneys tend to hate going to trial and will try to avoid it.). Prosecutors are not above offering immunity or granting lighter sentences in exchange for help in other cases, often in the form of testimony against the big fish. For a criminal who believes &quot;snitches get stitches&quot;, an offer of flipping on your co-defendant for a sentence of 10 years, with parole in 5 is nothing to sneeze at when you're looking at 25 to life without parole for what you did. It's not immunity for testimony (typically, witnesses in plea bargains are not allowed to take the 5th with respect to questions on the stand because they will typically plea before the trial, and thus can't be prosecuted for the same crime.).
My answer would be different if either Alice or Bob was the landlord, or the landlord had a separate agreement with Alice and Bob. If a single lease is written, per the comment, that Alice and Bob are components of "the tenants", and "the tenants" have rented the named premises, then they all have equal rights to occupy the whole premises under the lease. If the landlord is professional I will further presume they all have joint and several liability for the whole rent; it would be inequitable to alienate Alice with joint and several liability from any part of the premises without her consent. If there is a separate roommate agreement that allocates rooms and expected share of rent or controls behaviors, then that is a contract that can form as a meeting of the minds of the roommates where they each trade something of value, such as exclusive use of a room. The narrative suggests an original verbal agreement that Bob would like to change. That's nice but Alice doesn't have to agree; or can agree with other changes of value to her such as the ratio of expected rent reflecting the ratio of use and access to the space Alice would have.
I'm no expert, but I had assumed this clause was present in case of the following situation. Joe is arrested for a robbery of a London bank. Joe says nothing under questioning. At trial, Joe's defense is that at the time of the robbery, he was in Sheffield drinking beer with his brother. On the basis of common sense, a jury could think: "Surely if Joe were really innocent, he would have told the police of his alibi at the time he was questioned, and saved himself a lot of trouble. Since he didn't do that, maybe a more likely explanation is that he wasn't actually in Sheffield, but that sometime between arrest and trial, he came up with the idea of faking an alibi in Sheffield, and convinced people to testify falsely to that effect. Yes, that does seem more plausible. So we are not going to give much credence to Joe's supposed alibi." So it really would be the case that not mentioning the alibi during questioning would harm Joe's defense at trial. The warning, then, is intended to keep Joe from doing this inadvertently. If Joe's alibi is genuine, but out of a misguided desire to exercise his right to remain silent, he doesn't mention it during questioning, he may accidentally increase his chances of being wrongly convicted. Everybody has an interest in avoiding this.
The defense has an opportunity to question the witness the prosecution had called to provide foundation for the evidence, and in this case the defense's perspective is that the prosecution was trying to introduce evidence that they had improperly digitally manipulated. Part of their questioning was trying to figure out how the witness had manipulated the image prior to offering it as evidence. It's the prosecution's burden to prove that the evidence they are offering is accurate, the defense's purpose in asking the witness questions he could not answer is to try to prove to the judge that the prosecution has not laid proper foundation for the evidence because it has been manipulated from its original form in a way the prosecution cannot explain or justify as remaining fair and accurate to the events captured by the original footage. This case in particular had a lot of video evidence, and most of these issues were handled in motions in limine before the trial started. However, the drone evidence in question was dropped at the prosecutor's office after the trial started, so the prosecution did not really have time to hire and voir dire an expert witness on Amped 5 (keeping in mind that the defense similarly had little time to review and account for the new evidence in the middle of trial). Since the defense in this case were cross-examining the witness, they have some leeway to present an argument with their questioning like they chose to do with the red/blue pixel drawings. As I recall the judge allowed the evidence as-is, so it does not appear that the defense's arguments were persuasive to the judge.
united-states Bob could do any number of things to try to convince someone to prosecute Alice: call the prosecutor's boss, or the district attorney (or their equivalents in DOJ if it's a federal crime), or his elected representatives; he could also go to the media, or post on social networks... But if none of that works, the article is right: Prosecutors can't be legally compelled to prosecute someone Crime victims don't have any rights to control whether a prosecution happens—the government is the plaintiff. A prosecutor can even file charges over a victim's objections. Federal law and some states have Crime Victims' Rights Acts, which do grant some rights. But note the particularly relevant exception in that law: Nothing in this chapter shall be construed to impair the prosecutorial discretion of the Attorney General or any officer under his direction. This is also a separation of powers issue: the executive branch has the exclusive right to determine how the laws are executed. Neither the legislature nor the judicial branches can compel the executive to prosecute someone. Note that none of this affects Bob's civil remedies: he can still sue Alice for damages. But that won't result in her ending up in prison.
You're wrong in the first sentence So I agree, that a hung jury is in fact reasonable doubt by lack of concurrence, the defendant should be acquitted. No. A hung jury just means they can't decide on any item they should decide about, for whatever reason. Maybe they all want to see the defendant guilty but can't decide if it is murder 1st or 2nd degree, or one of them is just trying to stay out of work and just is contrarian to whatever the jury deliberates, wether guilty or not guilty. In either case they can not tell the judge what they can't agree about. They can only tell the judge that they can't agree on a verdict. Since the judge can't assume anything about the deliberations, he can only reset trial and swap the jury for one that actually might be able to decide. The whole Jury is tossed out, their deliberations don't matter anymore - their hung state does not influence the re-trial.
I'm not sure what jurisdiction you're referring to, but here are the state involuntary manslaughter laws. Broad brush, the elements tend to be: Someone was killed as a result of act by the defendant. The act either was inherently dangerous to others or done with reckless disregard for human life. The defendant knew or should have known his or her conduct was a threat to the lives of others. However, you're really backwards planning from a jail vs. army decision, so you might actually be after something like felony hit and run, which can most certainly result in incarceration. The elements of felony hit and run generally include leaving the scene of an accident regardless of fault (hit and run typically becomes a felony when someone was injured in the accident). Since the elements vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, it makes sense to look them up wherever the accident will take place in the book. If it takes place in the U.S. this is a state-by-state compendium. Then you can tweak the story to satisfy the applicable elements and induce the jail vs. army decision (even if army policy prohibits it, it's still pretty common fiction!).
Yes. In a civil case, there are two parties and the case is about finding out who has which obligations to whom. In a civil case, the plaintiff has to prove that they actually incurred damage through the actions of the defendant. A criminal case is the state vs. the defendant. The "wronged party" is the society as a whole, usually represented by the prosecutor. The victim, if there is one, just plays the role of yet another witness to find out if the defendant needs to be punished and how. There are also examples of crimes which are completely victimless but still punished by some societies. For example, in many places sexual intercourse between two consenting adult siblings is a crime (incest), even though there is no victim. Also, for some crimes it is even a crime to attempt to commit it. So one can be punished in a criminal court even though they didn't actually succeed in causing any damage to anyone. Example: I throw a rock at your car. When I hit, you can sue me in a civil court and force me to pay for the repairs. When I miss, I caused no damage to you, so there is nothing you could sue about. But what if I throw a rock at you and miss? That's attempted assault, maybe even attempted murder. When law enforcement finds out about it, I could be arrested, prosecuted and convicted to a prision sentence, even though you are perfectly fine.