How is culpability determined in the following strange case? I'm a murder mystery writer and recently I came up with an interesting idea for a murder method, but I was curious in particular legal logic behind it. Let's say two adults - Persons A and B - decided to shoot their BB guns at the other, for some reason. Unbeknownst to Person A, a third party hours prior - a Person C - replaced A's BB gun with an actual gun that looked exactly like the original BB gun. When Persons A and B shoot at each other, B of course dies. Let's say later, in the course of the case, it was proven beyond a doubt that Person A didn't know he had an actual gun. On top of that, it was conclusively proven that Person C was the one who switched the BB gun with an actual gun. Would Person A still be convicted or face some sort of legal trouble? Additionally, would Person C ever be arrested, even though he technically wasn't the one who killed Person B?
It is a good idea for a story: that’s why it’s a trope It features (with drugs instead of guns) as the core plot point of 2019’s Knives Out. Shooting someone with a BB gun is problematic because it’s hard to see what legal justification there could be for that type of assault. However, if we instead thing of paint ball guns, C is a murderer and A &amp; B have committed no crime. Real life examples: While performing a suicide scene in a production of Mary Stuart by Friedrich Schiller in Vienna, actor Daniel Hoevels￼ accidentally slit his own neck, as the theatre company's order for the originally sharp knife to be dulled for the stage was overlooked; a police investigation never determined who was responsible, or whether it was due to negligence or a deliberate attempt to kill or injure him. The wound was almost fatal, but Hoevels quickly returned to the stage after emergency treatment in the hospital. Never treat a blank in a gun as harmless. They can maim or kill you. Anyone who says otherwise is not your friend. Read the article here on Gun Safety for more details. There have even been two sad cases listed in Fatal Method Acting: Brandon Lee, accidentally killed during The Crow because the crew left a cartridge in the barrel before loading the blanks, which then hit his spine; and actor Jon-Erik Hexum, who in-between takes of the show Cover-Up, goofed around with a gun and by firing it into the side of his head, had a blank cause enough trauma to shatter a quarter-sized piece of his skull and propel the pieces into his brain. More than 20 illusionists have been killed performing the 'bullet catch' trick. It is generally considered the most dangerous magic trick as so many things can go wrong. Some of those killed were murdered when someone (often their partner/assistant) substituted a live round for the blank or—in earlier days, when single-shot black powder guns were used—placed the ball back in the barrel after it had been removed.
Under U.S. law, double jeopardy prevents you from being charged with the same charge twice, and also from being charged with any offense which is a lesser included offense of the charged offense, or a charge so substantially similar that for constitutional purposes it amounts to the same crime. Basically, the test is whether a prior acquittal would be inconsistent with a new criminal charge. For example, even though there is an additional element of the crime of murdering a postal officer to the crime of murdering someone on federal property, double jeopardy would probably bar a retrial of a murder on federal property case simply because the victim happened to be a postal worker and that element wasn't charged in the original indictment. This is because the acquittal of the first murder charge would almost always imply a jury determination that a murder didn't take place which would be inconsistent with a murder of a postal worker charge. On the other hand, a trial on a murder charge would probably not bar, for example, a trial on a burglary charge (which at common law involved trespassing with an intent to commit a crime), even if the burglary charge arose from the same conduct. This is because an acquittal on a murder charge isn't necessarily inconsistent with the existence of a trespass, or with the intent to commit some crime other than the murder for which the defendant was acquitted. But the exact way that the line gets draw is tricky and while what I have described is a good general summary of the cases interpreting the double jeopardy clause, it isn't a perfect one. This issue has been litigated many, many tines over the years, so there are a lot of cases that are squarely on point addressing specific fact patterns in precedents that are binding case law that are not always a perfect fit to the general principles. In these circumstances, the binding case law is going to control, at least until a court with appellate authority over the court whose case established the precedent in question decided to overrule a prior precedent from the lower court, or in the case of U.S. Supreme Court precedents, until the U.S. Supreme Court revisits one of its own prior precedents as wrong decided or wrongly interpreted, which happens now and then, although it is a rare event.
Yes, but that doesn't make the theft not theft At the time of the crime, Joe committed theft. The state can prosecute Joe for that theft. Alice's subsequent gift does not change this although it would prevent her from suing for recovery. As a practical matter, if Alice was willing to lie and say that the gift preceded the theft or she had given permission for the item to be taken, this would almost surely create reasonable doubt in any prosecution. However, on a pure &quot;these are the facts&quot; basis, the theft is a theft.
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.
The state argued, and the jury was convinced, that Mr. Holle turned over his keys specifically intending to facilitate the robbery. They necessarily found that Mr. Holle was not telling the truth when he said he thought it was all a joke. I don't know what evidence they had to demonstrate that, but I could imagine that there was testimony indicating Mr. Holle knew that these people had engaged in similar acts before, that the group spoke of the plan with a level of specificity that made him aware they were not joking, or that he saw them taking other steps to prepare that let him know they were planning a crime. It doesn't matter if he wasn't renting the vehicle or didn't have an agreement to divide the spoils. The question of "why" he facilitated the crime is technically irrelevant to the legal question of whether he facilitated the crime. Nonetheless, I could imagine several reasons why he would have lent his car: he wanted to ingratiate himself with this group, he was bullied into doing it, he believed he would get some of the pot they stole, he didn't like the target, and so on. The fact that he was risking prison time is a uniquely poor argument that he didn't know what he was doing. The risk of punishment is always present for committing a crime, and yet we know that people commit crimes all day, every day. Why do they do it? Probably a good question for psychology.SE.
The district court judge, as reported in this news story has held that there was probable cause to arrest Daniel Robbins in this case, and that his rights were not violated. If this ruling stands, officers acted legally, although they might still be required to return the phone with the images. Whether there is probable cause for an arrest (or a search) is always a very fact-based issue. I have not found the judge's actual decision, only a news summary of it, which can often be misleading. Specific facts about exactly what Robbins did or said may be important in determining whether there was in fact probable cause. It appears that Robbins intends to appeal this decision. If he does there may be an opinion from a Circuit Court of Appeals expanding on whether there was probable cause or any violation of rights, and why. Previous cases have established that normally there is no reasonable expectation of privacy for acts performed in public; that one my photograph or video record such public acts legally from anywhere that one may legally be; that there is a right photograph or record police officers engaged in official actions or the use of police powers; and that laws attempting to forbid such recording are unconstitutional when so applied. However, it seems from the news story that here the police officers were off-duty and not engaging in any official acts or use of police powers. That might change the ruling. I rather expect the district court's decision to be overturned, but there is no case exact;ly on point that i know of, and one can never be absolutely sure what a court will do in a particular case. I can see why police officers may have felt threatened, and why the Judge may have been inclined to sympathize with them, although I think the decision was incorrect. But a Judge of the Appeals Court might possibly feel the same way. Until the Appeals Court rules, one cannot be sure what the law in this matter will finally be. (It is possibly, but statistically a bit unlikely, there there will eventually be a ruling from the US Supreme Court on this case.) This article from Nolo Press discusses the issue of recording police, primarily in the context of police who are performing their official duties. It says: Almost every court to consider the issue has determined that the First Amendment gives you the right to record (pictures, video, and audio) police officers in public while they are performing their duties. But that doesn’t mean you’re allowed to record if you’re doing so surreptitiously (secretly), interfering with the officer, or otherwise breaking the law. The courts' primary rationale for allowing police officer recording is that the First Amendment includes the right to freely discuss our government, and the right of freedom of the press and public access to information. Given the prevalence of personal filming devices, more and more “news” is being gathered and disseminated by members of the public. The courts have found that freedom of the press applies to citizen journalists and documentarians just as it does to formal members of the press. (See, for example, Glik v. Cunniffe, 655 F.3d 78 (1st Cir. 2011).) The Nolo article goes on to discuss whether a Section 1983 Federal suit against police officers who arrest someone recording their actions will succeed, indicating that this will depend on the specific facts of the case. The Nolo article mentions that one is not allowed to interfere with an officer during process of recording. What exactly constitutes &quot;interference&quot; is not fully clear, and will depend on the facts of a specific case. The Nolo article mentions other circumstances when recording an officer may not be legal.
Once a case has been commenced, you can definitely lose, or you can probably lose. If you decline to proceed, you definitely lose. If you proceed, the jury (or judge as the case might be), might find some witnesses more believable than others and might find that the forensic evidence is not as convincing as it seems. Empirical evidence suggests that criminal trials reach the correct conclusion in about 90% of cases that aren't resolved on an uncontested basis. Generally speaking, the Crown is only going to press a case where the prosecutor subjectively believes that they are correct that the defendant is, at least, guilty of something. So, a Crown prosecutor can also justify "rolling the dice" in a case with a low probability of winning, because at a minimum, a factually guilty defendant (whether it can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt or not in a particular trial with a particular finder of fact) has to suffer through a trial which is a form of punishment (particularly if the defendant can't secure pre-trial release). Also, while the Crown prosecutor ultimately represents the state and not the victim, the victim of a crime is a quasi-client and sometimes a victim who often has personal knowledge of a defendant's factual guilt, really wants to have their "day in court" and a chance to present their case to the public for all to hear. Law enforcement officers working on the case may want it to go to trial for similar reasons. Strategically, bringing even weak cases to trial also makes a Crown prosecutors threat to go forward with a trial even in a seemingly weak case more credible and that can increase the prosecutor's negotiating power. Also, a trial always reveals information, and sometimes the information revealed in a trial that is lost can provide value in future law enforcement efforts. Finally, prosecutors are humans and people, in general, don't like to admit their own mistakes. So, they may go forward even when their case is weak because they don't want to admit that they were mistaken and would prefer to have somebody else say they were wrong than to admit error. The personality type that doesn't admit mistakes is pretty common in this area.
It depends. If the tip is that there are pictures proving that a minor consumed alcohol 10 years ago, probably not. If the tip is that there's a kidnapped child being tortured inside, more likely. In either event, they would probably seek to build up some independently obtained evidence to enable them to obtain a warrant based on probable cause. An anonymous tip might be enough, depending on how detailed it was and whether there were any objective indicators of reliability, but it's not a sure thing.