When is a trial considered to have happened vis-a-vis double jeopardy? When is a trial considered to have happened vis-a-vis double jeopardy? In other words, at one point is a person considered to be tried for an offense and cannot be tried again? At the arraignment or at the judgement? To be more specific, if a person has been arraigned, can the prosecutor abandon the case and then indict the person again later for the same offense, or are they considered to be tried after the arraignment occurs. If the double jeopardy only becomes effective when a judgement is rendered, then a prosecutor can theoretically start a trial, abandon it, then try the person again, abandon it again, and so on indefinitely. Is that how it is?
Jeopardy can attach at one of two different points: In a trial to a jury, jeopardy attaches when a jury is empaneled and sworn in. Martinez v. Illinois, 134 S. Ct. 2070, 2074 (2014) (&quot;There are few if any rules of criminal procedure clearer than the rule that 'jeopardy attaches when the jury is empaneled and sworn.'”) In a bench trial, jeopardy attaches when the prosecution begins questioning its first witness. Serfass v. United States, 420 U.S. 377, 388 (1975) (&quot;In a nonjury trial, jeopardy attaches when the court begins to hear evidence.&quot;) But the Double Jeopardy clause is not absolute. It bars a retrial after a conviction or an acquittal, but it does not bar a retrial after most mistrials. United States v. Wilson, 420 U.S. 332, 344 (1975) (&quot;[T]he Court has granted the Government the right to retry a defendant after a mistrial only where ‘there is a manifest necessity for the act, or the ends of public justice would otherwise be defeated.’&quot;) The clearest exception to the mistrial exception, though, is that a new trial is not allowed where the prosecution acts in bad faith to provoke a mistrial. United States v. Dinitz, 424 U.S. 600, 611 (1976) (&quot;The Double Jeopardy Clause does protect a defendant against governmental actions intended to provoke mistrial requests and thereby to subject defendants to the substantial burdens imposed by multiple prosecutions.&quot;) This would prevent the perpetual retrial situation you discussed. I don't think the Speedy Trial clause would have that effect, as the time for a Speedy Trial typically resets after a mistrial is declared.
A case can be &quot;dismissed&quot; at (most) any time (however, the further along in the process a case is, the less likely a judge will allow a case to be dismissed without very good reason). A case can be dismissed with or without &quot;prejudice&quot;, which in this legal context means essentially &quot;finality&quot;. A case dismissed with prejudice cannot be brought again, while a case dismissed without prejudice can be refiled. (Compare the criminal law concept of &quot;double jeopardy&quot;, though as phoog correctly notes, &quot;double jeopardy&quot; only applies in criminal trials, while prejudice can be applied in both civil and criminal courts). Many cases are dismissed without looking at the evidence (or even having the evidence admitted to the record); this is called &quot;summary judgement&quot; or &quot;judgement as a matter of law&quot;. There are generally three cases when this happens: First, if the prosecution or plaintiff (i.e. the party bringing accusations) has &quot;failed to state a claim upon which relief may be granted&quot;, i.e. asked for something the court cannot grant. Second, is if the defendant can show, that even if everything alledged by the plaintiff is true, that the necessarily elements of the crime or offense have not been proven. Third, is if there are no facts in dispute, and only a disagreement on interpreting the law.
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.
Short Answer No. Double jeopardy of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits someone from being prosecuted more than once for the same factually specific crime (i.e. "the same offense"). The Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment provides: “[N]or shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb.” The original acquittal was correct, because it was for a crime that did not happen. The later trial is for a different crime that actually did happen at a different time. In the same way, an acquittal for a DUI committed on Tuesday does not bar prosecution of the same defendant for a different DUI committed on Thursday. So, double jeopardy does not apply in the scenario presented. A Similar But Harder Case The analysis would be trickier if: A shoots B. A is tried and acquitted for the murder of B. B was only presumed dead but was actually alive. After being acquitted for Bs murder, B dies of the gunshot wound from A in (1). A is later arrested and tried for Bs murder (a second time). This is a much trickier question, because A was actually tried and acquitted of a crime that hadn't been completed at the time of trial, but in which A's involvement had terminated at the time. (To make it even more complex if you are inclined, in a first degree kidnapping case, the death penalty applies unless the defendant can prove the affirmative defense that the victim didn't die, and a first degree kidnapping acquittal would probably not bar a later murder conviction because the offenses have elements sufficiently different from each other, even though the death penalty or life in prison without parole sentence for that offense is based on the conclusive presumption that the victim died in law, rather than in fact.) Issue Preclusion This might depend upon the nature of the evidence at trial - if A did not raise the failure of the prosecution to provide corpus delecti (i.e. a dead body) or the misidentification of an alleged victim's body as a defense and instead, for example, argued an alibi defense (e.g. he was in jail at the time of the alleged shooting). This narrow fact pattern would be a particularly close question and I wouldn't be surprised to see a court deviate from the usual precedents and general rules under these circumstances. There is a substantial body of case law on whether prosecution for a crime with elements A, B, and C bars prosecution for a crime with different elements arising from the same facts and circumstances (e.g. if acquittal of a lesser included offense whose elements must all be proved to convict on the more severe offense provides double jeopardy protection), that wouldn't be directly applicable in my alternative scenario because the offense tried the first time and the second would have exactly the same elements. This depends upon when a concept analogous to the principle of collateral estoppel (also known as "issue preclusion") in civil cases, in which facts previously litigated can bind a party in a later lawsuit, with or without constitutional double jeopardy dimensions, applies in criminal cases. As a general rule, there was historically no doctrine of collateral estoppel in criminal cases as noted in a 1967 law review article. But, the U.S. Supreme Court has also adopted a limited version of the principle of collateral estoppel under the guise of the double jeopardy clause in criminal cases as it noted in Yeager (discused below) a few years after that article was written. [I]n Ashe v. Swenson, 397 U. S. 436 (1970). . . we squarely held that the Double Jeopardy Clause precludes the Government from relitigating any issue that was necessarily decided by a jury’s acquittal in a prior trial. The hard question is determining what a jury's acquittal "necessarily decided" in particular facts and circumstances, given that a jury verdict in a criminal case typically only determines if the jury convicted, acquitted, or hung on each of the charges presented to it in the indictment and not dismissed before tiral. This analysis requires the court to assume that the jury acted rationally, even if extraneous facts allow us to know that it did not act rationally, and to determine that a prior acquittal was logically inconsistent with a new conviction. In Yeager v. U.S. (2009), however, the U.S. Supreme Court interpreted Ash v. Swenson narrowly. It held that hung juries on counts should be ignored for constitutional purposes as if that the trial of that count never happened. When Is A Murder Committted? There would also be a question of when the crime of murder is committed (i.e. when the acts are taken or only once someone dies). Generally, murder is not a complete crime until someone dies. For example, if you were prosecuted for murder before someone died and acquitted because they were alive, you could be prosecuted again for murder later if they died of their injuries. (The more usual case is that someone is tried and convicted of assault, then the victim dies, and they are retried for murder, which is allowed since a conviction for assault is not logically inconsistent with a conviction for murder.) Similarly, if you were convicted of murder after a fair trial and presented the live body of the victim as newly discovered evidence, there is a good chance that you could have the original conviction vacated. If, however, you were convicted, and the Court found that you knew that the victim hadn't died at the time of trial, but you did not raise the fact that the victim wasn't dead, it isn't clear if you could have the original conviction vacated because it was a fair trial and you knew evidence sufficient to get yourself acquitted (which you may have refrained from presenting to avoid conviction on a lesser charge like kidnapping or aggravated assault), and the status of an "actual innocence" grounds for vacating a conviction after trial is hotly disputed, conservatives like the late Justice Scalia generally say "no", liberals generally say "yes", moderates like to say "yes" but make it almost impossible to establish except in rare cases like one where a live person walks in when there was a murder conviction for killing that actually living person. Obviously this doesn't come up all that often because usually prosecutors don't bring murder cases until they find a body and identify it and aren't in a rush to do so because there is usually no statute of limitations for murder. Conclusion In The Harder Case My overall conclusion is that double jeopardy would not apply even in the much closer case. This is because a belief that the victim was not dead could have been a basis for the original verdict notwithstanding a presumption to the contrary. The jury knows that a death is a element of murder and might have acquitted not based upon the reasons presented to it at trial but based upon their own personal view that the failure to present a body left them with reasonable doubt for some reason or another, which is a perfectly plausible scenario. If this happened, an acquittal the first time and conviction the second time wouldn't be inconsistent, even if no one argued about a lack of a body in their trial presentation. Ironically, if A was acquitted of aggravated assault of B in the first trial, that would be far more likely to bar a conviction when B later dies, than an acquittal from a charge of murdering B, because murder is logically inconsistent with an acquittal of aggravated assault in most circumstances, but a previous murder acquittal based upon lack of proof of a dead body is not inconsistent with proof of a later death. But, this would still be a close case that could come out either way on the double jeopardy issue. A court could conceivably argue that if the death of B was not contested at trial, that the first murder acquittal would be inconsistent with a murder conviction upon the death of B later on from the events that formed the basis of the first prosecution. Tactical Considerations Of course, even if prosecution of A for B's murder the second time was not be barred by double jeopardy, it is still likely that the prosecution would agree to lesser charges or not prosecute because the first acquittal showed it was a weak case, and the fact that A would now also be able to argue that the gunshot was not the proximate cause of B's death (and that it was instead, for example, due to medical malpractice or was a de facto suicide due to refusal of adequate treatment). Scope Of Analysis This reasoning would apply anywhere in the U.S. and is not specific to a particular state or territory as double jeopardy is a principle of U.S. Constitutional law that applies directly in federal courts (including the courts of territories and commonwealths) and indirectly through selective incorporation against the states via the 14th Amendment.
There is a general defence to any crime called self defense. If you commit a crime, but the reason you commit it is because you are acting in self defense, or the defense of another, then you will not be found guilty of that crime. For example, if you kill someone, but the court believes you are acting in self defense, then you will not be found guilty of murder (or manslaughter). This defense extends to other crimes too, and trespassing would be included in this. Acting in the defense of another person has the same effect as acting in self defense. Just note that you would have to prove that it was reasonable for you to be acting in the way you did. Usually this means that the crime you committed was proportional or necessary to prevent the crime that would have occurred, and if self defense is involved, that it was necessary to do what you had to do to prevent harm to you or another.
He cannot be given a higher sentence because he appealed. If the appeal is unsuccessful, he will be in exactly the same legal position as if he had not appealed, aside from any legal fees an costs he may incur for the appeal. The worst that could happen to Chauvin at the end of the appeals process, is that all three convictions are upheld, which leaves him no worse off than if there had been no appeal. However, if an appeal is successful, it will probably lead to a new trial. In general, when an accused person is retried after a successful appeal, there is the possibility of a worse outcome. In this case, however, Chauvin was convicted on all counts charged, so the outcome could not get worse. If Chauvin were to appeal and get a new trial, but be convicted in a new trial, he could in theory receive a larger sentence after the second trial. But since the charges would be the same, the range of possible sentences and the sentencing guidelines would be the same. Of course, no one yet knows what sentence the judge will impose after the current conviction.
You misunderstand the significance of the phrase "innocent until proven guilty." This is in part because you are not considering the entire phrase. The full phrase is that an accused party is "presumed innocent until proven guilty." This does not mean that the accused is innocent, only that criminal procedure must take as its starting point that the accused did not commit the crime. The major implication of the presumption, and indeed its original purpose, is that it places the burden of proof on the prosecution. This means that if a prosecutor asserts that you stole something, you do not have to prove that you did not. Rather, the prosecutor must prove that you did. The only reason to present evidence of your own is to rebut the prosecutor's evidence. Another practical implication is that a decision to detain someone awaiting a criminal trial may not be based on the assumption that the accused committed the crime. On the other hand, that decision is not based on the assumption that the accused did not commit the crime. There is a presumption of innocence, but no assumption of innocence, and the government is not obliged before the person is convicted to treat the person as if there is no accusation or charge. Wikipedia has a decent discussion. If we modify your question accordingly, it becomes How can two people be presumed innocent until proven guilty if their stories conflict? Now the answer should be clear. The prosecutor must develop evidence that shows which one of the people has committed the crime. If the prosecutor cannot do that, neither person may be punished.
In closing arguments, an attorney should only refer to evidence that was admitted at trial. In opening arguments, an attorney may refer to evidence that the attorney reasonably believes will be admitted at trial, and if the attorney has grounds to admit the transcript as an exhibit, could do so. If not, the attorney could still reasonable state: the evidence will show that an arresting officer described Mr. Jones as &quot;crazy&quot; without showing a transcript or explaining where it comes from (on the theory that the officer will either testify to that effect at trial or will be impeached at trial with the transcript for testifying in a contrary manner). Usually the transcript can usually be admitted only for impeachment, so usually it wouldn't be admissible absent contrary testimony at trial. But there are exceptions that apply to that rule which could make it admissible and hence proper to reference or show in opening arguments.