Is the interpretation of Double Jeopardy realistic in the movie Fracture? Related question Based on a discussion in this comment thread. In the movie Fracture, a man shoots his wife. She ends up in a coma. Meanwhile, the man gets charged with attempted murder. Due to a technicality, a lot of the evidence of the prosecution is inadmissable, leaving them without any real evidence. Furthermore, they are missing a murder weapon, which would 'seal the deal'. Because of this, the man is acquitted of attempted murder and let go. He then takes the required legal action to get the hosptial to pull the plug on his wife, killing her. After all of this, the prosecution manages to find the murder weapon and proceeds to charge the man with murder, because the wife is now dead. Question Is this realistic? The actual killing of the wife would be 'legal', so can he be charged for murder for something that has been done legally, only because they can prove is intent to kill her before that? Especially since he has already been acquitted of that fact.
Is this realistic? Yes. The dramatic performance plays out in the same way that it would in the U.S. Court system. The actual killing of the wife would be 'legal', so can he be charged for murder for something that has been done legally, only because they can prove is intent to kill her before that? Especially since he has already been acquitted of that fact. Mostly, this is an issue of causation and not double jeopardy. From a double jeopardy perspective, the crime of murder is not complete until the person dies, and they have not be tried for murder, so this is a different crime that had not occurred until after the attempted murder trial was over. Causation Issues Even if the immediate cause of the wife's death is withdrawal of life support, the shooting could still be a legally sufficient cause of the wife's death. For example, suppose that you shoot someone and the hospital can't give the victim a blood transfusion because the victim has blood type O- (universal donor) which can only receive blood from other people with blood type O-, and the hospital, due to negligence on the part of a hospital administrator, has run out out of type O- blood. The fact that the victim would not have died if the hospital has not negligently failed to have type O- blood on hand does not provide a defense to murder on the part of the person who shot her. While terminating life support is "legal" it also constitutes a non-judicial finding with legal effect on the part of the person authorizing it and the physicians signing off on the decision, the further medical care would have been futile and that the person whose life support was terminated was already dead in key material respects, even though they would not be dead for purposes of a murder charge until life support is terminated. When death is a natural and foreseeable result of action that causes physical harm, the death is caused by the act that causes the physical harm. Something else that causes death would have to be a "superseding cause" and not just an additional cause of death. Thus, the fact that life support was terminated legally does not mean that she cannot be a murder victim. Indeed, many murder victims are people who are on life support for some period of time and then have that life support terminated because it is futile to continue medical care and the person is already "brain dead" or something equivalent to that. Collateral Estoppel Issues Double jeopardy does carry with it a related concept of "collateral estoppel" which provides that facts necessarily decided in one criminal case cannot be decided differently in a subsequent, related criminal case in some circumstances. But, collateral estoppel applies only when the facts in the prior criminal case were necessarily decided on the merits in the prior criminal case. Acquittal of criminal charged does not necessarily include a determination that someone was innocent of the charges. The fact that he was acquitted of attempted murder does not mean that the jury found that he didn't attempt or intend to murder her. In particular, a dismissal of criminal charges as a result of a technicality that excluded evidence related to an element of the crime for which there was an acquittal, is not a determination on the merits that a particular element of a crime was actually absent, so it would not be binding in the subsequent criminal case for murder. An acquittal does not mean that every element of the prior criminal charges was found not to be present. Collateral estoppel arising from the double jeopardy right, in contrast, might be a ground for dismissal of the murder case, if the man's primary (and perhaps only) defense to the attempted murder case had been that he had established the affirmative defense that someone else committed the murder, or that he had an alibi that made it impossible for him to have committed the murder. Then, the jury would have found on the merits that this defense, equally applicable to the murder case, had already been established.
I think it would depend on how a jury viewed the "challenge" to her audience. The general rule for self-defense in Texas is that the person needs to reasonably believe that force is immediately necessary to protect herself from someone else's use of force. I think a jury would find it reasonable to believe that someone forcefully attempting to steal your gun was planning to use it against you. More importantly, the law generally presumes that that belief is reasonable if the person is being robbed, assuming that she isn't otherwise engaged in criminal activity. Since openly carrying an AR-15 is -- as far as I know -- legal in Texas, I think she'd probably be fine. But: The law also says that the use of force is not justified when a person consents to the other person's use of force, or if the person has provoked the other person. So now you have the question of whether the student's challenge constitutes a provocation or consent to the use of force. I think you can make a decent argument for provocation, which means that "the defendant did some act or used some words intended to and calculated to bring on the difficulty in order to have a pretext for inflicting injury." Neal v. State, No. 12-14-00158-CR, 2016 WL 1446138, at *11 (Tex. App. Apr. 13, 2016). You might also make out a decent argument for consent, which doesn't necessarily seem to require that the parties exactly spell out the rules of engagement, just that there is some kind of agreement between the two parties. In one case, for instance, a defendant tried to argue that a fight had gone beyond the rules because one party used a chokehold and knocked the other out. But the court said that the only actual rule agreed to was that there would be no weapons used. Padilla v. State, No. 03-07-00513-CR, 2008 WL 5423139, at *2 (Tex. App. Dec. 31, 2008). That makes me think that as long as there's consent to some kind of fight, you don't necessarily need rules, though you do need to abide by them if you agree to them. So what's the scope of consent in this case? If we say that she's agreed to the use of force by challenging people to take something from her, and she hasn't said how you can do it, can you do it by any means you choose? I don't think a court would let someone shoot her to get it, but maybe they would be allowed to pry it out of her hands. So all of that is a long way of saying that this is a tricky question, and that any decision would probably depend a lot on the specific facts of who she was talking to, what exactly she was saying, how she was carrying the gun, and so on.
He is probably guilty of negligent homicide or involuntary manslaughter, at most (a minor felony), and is possibly not guilty of a crime at all. The primary distinction between classes of homicide is mens rea (i.e. intent). The only affirmative act he took was to move the pillow. He did so both without intending to or knowing that he would kill Jane (the intent necessary for murder), and also, without clear actual knowledge that he would be creating a risk that Jane would die (a reckless state of mind that would support a conviction for manslaughter). Also, note that Walter himself, at this time, is not engaged in a felony, so he is not guilty of felony murder. We can presume he is present with the consent previously given of the owner of the property and did not mean anyone any harm. Likewise, this is not what is meant by "extreme indifference" for purposes of a murder statute, the paradigm of which is shooting randomly into a crowd knowing that someone will almost certainly be killed without knowing or intending that any particular person will die. The mental state necessary for negligent homicide is the equivalent of "gross negligence" in a civil case and is called "criminal negligence" in a criminal case. To be criminally negligent a person must fail to perceive a substantial and unjustifiable risk that a certain result will occur, and the risk must be of such a nature that the defendant's failure to perceive it constitutes a gross deviation from a reasonable person's standard of care. If a jury found that a reasonable person ought should clearly know that moving a pillow put Jane at risk of dying, then he might be guilty of criminal negligence. But, if a jury found that a reasonable person would not know that moving the pillow put Jane at grave risk of death, his action would not be criminally negligent. There are also at least three questions of causation which is not entirely independent of the question of negligence. First, generally an act is only considered a cause of a consequence if it is a foreseeable result of the action. If Jane's vomit caused death is not a foreseeable result of moving the pillow, then her death might not be legally caused by moving the pillow. Second, how likely is it that she would have died even if Walter had never entered the room. There are lots of ways that the pillow could have been jostled during the night leading to the same result. If it likely would have happened anyway, Walter's involvement might not be the legal cause of the death. Third, how much fault should be attributed to Jane? This is closely related to the second question. If her death was primarily caused by her getting dangerously high and placing herself in a vulnerable position, perhaps Walter's involvement is not a meaningful cause of the death. A New Mexico court has held that the defense that the victim was negligent has value only if it establishes that the victim's negligence was the sole cause of the accident. State v. Maddox, 99 N.M. 490, 660 P.2d 132 (Ct. App. 1983). But, what about Jesse's negligence? Under a relevant standard criminal jury instruction in New Mexico: The State must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant's act was a significant cause of the death of __________________ (name of victim). Evidence has been presented that the negligence of a person other than the defendant may have contributed to the cause of death. Such contributing negligence does not relieve the defendant of responsibility for an act that significantly contributed to the cause of the death so long as the death was a foreseeable result of the defendant's actions. However, if you find the negligence of a person other than the defendant was the only significant cause of death, then the defendant is not guilty of the offense of __________________ (name of offense). Caveat: A number of states impose strict criminal liability on drug dealers, often for murder, if someone died from using a drug sold by them, but often it has to be a child, and often the drug has to be the proximate cause of death, e.g. due to an overdose or impurity in the drug. I would presume that Jesse and not Walter supplied the drugs to Jane, that Jane is an adult, and it is not obvious that the drug itself (as opposed to the vomiting due to the manner in which the drugs were used) was the proximate cause of death, so a statute like this might not apply in any case. This brings us to the hard part of the question: Without the pillow Jane rotates on her back and starts to vomit and cough, still sleeping. At first Walter tries to react, running to the other side of the bed to help her, but then he stops and decides to do nothing as she dies. Note that if Walter had moved the pillow without knowing that he was creating a risk, left the room ignorant, and then this happened, surely Walter would have no legal liability for Jane's death. If Walter develops the necessary intent for criminal liability, this probably doesn't happen until he observes that she is starting to choke on her vomit and might die. Even then, he does not intend for Jane to die and probably doesn't even know for certain that she will die from his inaction, so he is probably, at most reckless, if he has a duty to rescue for criminal law purposes. Generally, under both civil and criminal law, there is no duty to rescue, even if you can do so without any risk of harm to yourself. But, there is an exception, at least in civil liability, for a duty to rescue that arises from the fact that you put the person at risk of peril through your affirmative actions. Does this apply here, at all, or in a criminal case? The first question is the exact language of the homicide statute. Some homicide offenses require affirmative acts, while others can arise from acts or omissions where there is a legal duty to act. Every crime requires some voluntary act or omission, and the voluntary act itself was not a crime and perhaps was not even a tort, at the moment it was taken, because Walter did not realize that his act created a risk of harm. He create a peril, but he did so innocently. A pretty standard formulation is that an omission is only a crime when the law creates a legal duty to act, but this is, of course, a question begging standard as it doesn't clarify whether there is a legal duty to act, which is at issue here. As the previous link notes, creation of a peril can give rise to a legal duty to act, but only sometimes. (4) Duty arising from creation of peril. If a person acts culpably to imperil another, he or she has a legal duty to rescue the victim. The cases are split on whether a duty to rescue arises if someone innocently or accidentally imperils another. This case would fall in the category of someone who innocently or accidentally imperils another, in which the cases are split, which which the linked article cites the following authority: Compare Commonwealth v. Cali, 247 Mass. 20, 24-25, 141 N.E. 510, 511 (1923) (defendant under duty to try to extinguish a fire that he accidentally set to his house and thus was guilty of arson when he did not) with King v. Commonwealth, 285 Ky. 654, 659, 148 S.W.2d 1044, 1047 (1941) (defendant who, in lawful defense of a third person, shot and wounded an attacker was under no duty to seek medical attention for the wounded assailant). A commentary that is part of a California standard jury instruction (for involuntary manslaughter, not murder for which this kind of liability is presumably not available) makes the following observation: A legal duty to act may also exist where the defendant's behavior created or substantially increased the risk of harm to the victim, either by creating the dangerous situation or by preventing others from rendering aid. (People v. Oliver (1989) 210 Cal.App.3d 138, 147-148 [258 Cal.Rptr. 138] [defendant had duty to act where she drove victim to her home knowing he was drunk, knowingly allowed him to use her bathroom to ingest additional drugs, and watched him collapse on the floor]; Sea Horse Ranch, Inc. v. Superior Court (1994) 24 Cal.App.4th 446, 456 [30 Cal.Rptr.2d 681] [defendant had duty to prevent horses from running onto adjacent freeway creating risk].) These examples would suggest that an innocently or accidentally created risk is sufficient to create a duty sufficient to support involuntary manslaughter liability for an omission under California law, and would probably lead to involuntary manslaughter liability in the case in the question as well, under California law. New Mexico, unlike California, does not have a standard criminal jury instruction or really definitive section of its criminal code that clearly resolves this question, although the fact that California which uses a murder, voluntary manslaughter, and involuntary manslaughter distinction in the same way that New Mexico does, limits criminal liability for omissions to involuntary manslaughter suggests that New Mexico would as well. The New Mexico case State v. Greenwood, 2012 -NMCA- 017, 271 P.3d 753 (N.M. App. 2011), touches on the issue, suggesting that there may be liability only for involuntary manslaughter (or certain specialized crimes based upon a relationship such as that of a nursing home to a resident of a nursing home) based upon an omission, and that the liability for an omission can only arise when there is a legal duty, but almost implies that only contactual duties are sufficient. It does so at paragraph 35 which says: Importantly, even if the LINKS contract relating to Jared were to have been renewed and to have been in force at the time of Jared's death, we are not convinced that it would be the sole basis or even a controlling factor in determining Defendant's legal responsibility under the Act. Defendant's criminal liability must exist solely based on an omission— a failure to act when she had a legal responsibility to act. See Deborah A. Goodall, Penal Code Section 22.04: A Duty to Care for the Elderly, 35 Baylor L.Rev. 589, 594 (1983) (stating that " authorities have long agreed that before an omission can constitute an offense[,] there must first be a duty to act" ); see also People v. Beardsley, 150 Mich. 206, 113 N.W. 1128, 1129 (1907) (" The law recognizes that under some circumstances the omission of a duty owed by one individual to another, where such omission results in the death of the one to whom the duty is owing, will make the other chargeable with manslaughter. This rule of law is always based upon the proposition that the duty neglected must be a legal duty, and not a mere moral obligation. It must be a duty imposed by law or by contract, and the omission to perform the duty must be the immediate and direct cause of death." (citation omitted)). But, this could be dicta because it was a case where any legal duty would arise under contract rather than for another reason, and as is the case in many smaller states, there is simply no case that has ever been decided in New Mexico which is squarely on point. Under British criminal law, in similar circumstances, a homicide conviction was vacated: R v Khan &amp; Khan (1998) CLR 830, confirmed that there is no separate category of manslaughter by omission unless the omission constitutes a breach of duty to act. The defendants supplied a 15-year-old prostitute with twice the amount of heroin likely to be taken by a regular user. The defendants left her unconscious in the flat, returning the next day to find that she had died of the overdose. Had medical assistance been called, the girl would probably not have died. The unlawful act was supplying the drug but the death was caused by the quantity injected by the victim. The trial judge invited jury to consider liability on the basis of the defendants' failure to summon medical assistance. On appeal, the conviction was quashed because the brothers had not accepted a duty to act before she took the heroin. A dissertation on when criminal liability is imposed for omissions in Scottish law can be found here. New Mexico, whose laws really should govern, has just two homicide statutes: § 30-2-1. Murder A. Murder in the first degree is the killing of one human being by another without lawful justification or excuse, by any of the means with which death may be caused: (1) by any kind of willful, deliberate and premeditated killing; (2) in the commission of or attempt to commit any felony; or (3) by any act greatly dangerous to the lives of others, indicating a depraved mind regardless of human life. Whoever commits murder in the first degree is guilty of a capital felony. B. Unless he is acting upon sufficient provocation, upon a sudden quarrel or in the heat of passion, a person who kills another human being without lawful justification or excuse commits murder in the second degree if in performing the acts which cause the death he knows that such acts create a strong probability of death or great bodily harm to that individual or another. Murder in the second degree is a lesser included offense of the crime of murder in the first degree. Whoever commits murder in the second degree is guilty of a second degree felony resulting in the death of a human being. Walter doesn't qualify for any of these prongs of the statute. § 30-2-3. Manslaughter Manslaughter is the unlawful killing of a human being without malice. A. Voluntary manslaughter consists of manslaughter committed upon a sudden quarrel or in the heat of passion. Whoever commits voluntary manslaughter is guilty of a third degree felony resulting in the death of a human being. B. Involuntary manslaughter consists of manslaughter committed in the commission of an unlawful act not amounting to felony, or in the commission of a lawful act which might produce death in an unlawful manner or without due caution and circumspection. Whoever commits involuntary manslaughter is guilty of a fourth degree felony. Clearly, Walter also does not qualify as guilty of voluntary manslaughter. There is no quarrel or heat of passion. So, either Walter is guilty in New Mexico of involuntary manslaughter, or he is not guilty of homicide at all. New Mexico also has an unusual, and rather merciful "excusable homicide" provision at New Mexico Statutes § 30-2-5, that should also be considered: Homicide is excusable in the following cases: A. when committed by accident or misfortune in doing any lawful act, by lawful means, with usual and ordinary caution and without any unlawful intent; or B. when committed by accident or misfortune in the heat of passion, upon any sudden and sufficient provocation, or upon a sudden combat, if no undue advantage is taken, nor any dangerous weapon used and the killing is not done in a cruel or unusual manner. Arguably, Walter falls under "excusable homicide" part A, as moving the pillow was a lawful act done without unlawful intent and that is what caused the death.
There is precedent for the idea that double jeopardy need not apply when the initial trial was a sham because the judge and/or jury had been bribed. See Aleman v. Judges of Cook County Circuit Court, 138 F.3d 302 (7th Cir. 1998). This case was very similar to your hypothetical: Aleman was initially acquitted of a murder, but years later it came to light that he had bribed the judge (in a bench trial). He was retried and convicted in state court. He appealed his conviction on the grounds of double jeopardy, but the Seventh Circuit denied his appeal, accepting Illinois' argument that because of the bribe, Aleman was never &quot;in jeopardy of life or limb&quot; in the first place.
The question of double jeopardy is not for a jury to consider. It is a question of law that is decided by the judge. In this case, Rittenhouse is charged, among other counts, with first-degree reckless homicide. If he is found guilty on a lesser charge, he will have been acquitted of first-degree reckless homicide, and he will not be able to be retried on that charge by the state of Wisconsin. (If the trial is invalidated to the extent that jeopardy never &quot;attached,&quot; for example if it is found that the judge had been bribed to prevent conviction, then a new trial could be brought.) Once jeopardy attaches, there can be no additional trials for the same crime, and any subsequent attempts at prosecution should be dismissed by the court long before a jury is selected. By contrast, if a court determines that a trial does not constitute double jeopardy and a jury is seated, the jury will not consider the possible existence of double jeopardy; the only way to challenge a trial judge's decision on that question would be through the appeals process. If the trial jury in the original trial cannot decide unanimously to acquit on a particular charge then it is a hung jury,and indeed that may result in a mistrial on only those counts on which the jury has deadlocked. From Wikipedia, quoting the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure: If the jury cannot agree on a verdict on one or more counts, the court may declare a mistrial on those counts. A hung jury does not imply either the defendant's guilt or innocence. The government may retry any defendant on any count on which the jury could not agree. States, however, may approach this slightly differently.
In the US, it depends on the jurisdiction because each state has its own homicide statutes: but, the defining elements don't differ a lot. Drawing on Washington state law, the first question is whether you intended to kill a person (it doesn't have to be a specific person). If you did, you have committed first-degree murder. It is first-degree murder, because it requires a certain amount of advance planning to kill with a drone. It does not matter that the drone houses the gun that killed the person and a program determines when the gun fires (the "it was the drone, not me" defense gets you nowhere: otherwise, you could always claim "It wasn't me, it was my gun / knife / fist".) If instead this is a badly-designed pig-slaughtering drone, then it could be manslaughter in the first degree, if the act was reckless, or manslaughter in the second degree, if the act was with criminal negligence. To determine which it is, you look at the definitions: A person is reckless or acts recklessly when he or she knows of and disregards a substantial risk that a wrongful act may occur and his or her disregard of such substantial risk is a gross deviation from conduct that a reasonable person would exercise in the same situation. versus A person is criminally negligent or acts with criminal negligence when he or she fails to be aware of a substantial risk that a wrongful act may occur and his or her failure to be aware of such substantial risk constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of care that a reasonable person would exercise in the same situation. So it would depend on whether you decided that safeguards which would prevent shooting people were too much bother (you know there is a risk and set aside that concern), or it didn't occur to you that a flying gun might hurt a person.
The double jeopardy clause would prevent you from being retried by the government that tried you for murder (probably a U.S. state). But, you could be tried for fraud and obstruction of justice at the state level, and you could be tried for murder if an appropriate federal offense were located, at the federal level. Often conspiracy to deprive someone of their civil rights is used as a federal offense when there is a state level acquittal, and it isn't impossible to imagine that happening in this case as the victim had a right to the protection of the laws, and the state had a right to enforce the criminal laws, which was deprived in a manner that could be called "under color of state law.'
Yes The Prosecutor for the local jurisdiction could formally file charges. No complaint by Rock is legally required, and given the video evidence available, Rock's testimony might not be as essential as a victim's testimony often is. But if Rock were to testify that the fight was staged, and no real assault occurred, the case would probably fall apart. That would not be good for the prosecutor's reputation, and might well be a reason not to proceed without a clear statement from Rock. See also: &quot;Pressing charges&quot; - is it needed to bring a charge?