I wonder, what if you've tried for the murder of someone, found innocent because of faulty evidence. That person turns up alive. Does that mean that you now can kill that person and get away with it? Because you can't be tried twice for the same thing?
Worst Character Assassination Episodes
- Thread starter Oddish
- Start date
^it's still weird. I'd think that, if you charge someone with attempted murder on person x, you implicitly admit that person x was not dead to begin with (can't kill a dead person, after all), so that the first conviction must have been wrongful. So then what? You go to prison for, say, 10 years for the murder attempt AND you get to sue the state for 5 years of wrongful imprisonment on the manslaughter conviction?
There's also the matter of pleading guilty or innocent. If you plead guilty then in some systems you can't say anything, no matter how things evolve. for example, you're charged with murder of someone, your lawyer convinces you that your chances of winning are not too good, IN SPITE OF BEING INNOCENT!!, so you plead guilty, get a reduced sentence, turns out the person is not dead, but since you pled guilty, there's nothing you can do, you can't even be freed!!! and must serve the whole damn thing!!!
Good question. Alas, I don't know the answer.
In a similar vein, there's a story of a woman who attempted to murder her husband by faking her own death and pinning the crime on him, knowing that he would be executed for the crime. Her plan was to turn up with faked amnesia after the execution. Fortunately for her husband, she was discovered before the "crime" could be prosecuted.
Someone can not be tried twice for the same crime. But what is the same crime?
A person can be robbed and survive many times.
So burgler A could be tried and convicted of robbing the house of house owner B on January 1, 1990, and on July 1, 1995, and on December 31, 1999, for example.
Highway robbery is defined as a crime.
Ten different men could be tried and conficted of robbing ten different travelers on the highway at different times. The crime has the same name "highway robbery" each time, but it is ten separate examples of the crime of highway robbery so it is not "The same crime"
A highwayman could rob ten different stages with ten different sets of passengers and could be arrested, tried, and convicted or acquited of ten separate crimes of hightway robbery in up to ten separate trials if there was one trial for each crime.
A serial kille rmight murder one person every month. Suppose that he is arrested for killing victim A on January 1, 2010 but is acqutted. Suppose that he is arrested again for killing victim B on May 13, 2010. Could his lawyers agrue that he can't be tried trwice and thus can't ever be tried again for murder, now matter how many murders he might get arrested for?
A person can survive many different attempts to murder them. And the separate or repeat offenders and/or conspiators in each attempt can be tried separately and convicted or acquitted separately for each act of attempted murder.
So if person A is tried and convicted and serves time for murdering person B on January 1, 2000 and is sentenced to only 10 years in prison, and person B turns up alive, and person A gets out of prison in 2010 and murders person B on December 31, 2010, he can be tried again for murdering person B, this time for the spearate crime of murdering person B on December 31, 2010 instead of on January 1, 2000.
That is my interpretation of the law.
I would advise against committing any crimes. You will find that your local judiciary will not concur.
No, because it would be two different crimes.
Even if you are acquitted of killing somebody THEN, you can't go ahead and kill them NOW. It's not the same crime.
But if you're found innocent of a crime you then can't be judged for that crime again, right? Because that would be double jeopardy. So I don't see how this doesn't apply here. That person is thought to be dead and the police and the prosecution think that you have murdered them, they try you, they lose, the jury says you're innocent. If now you actually kill that person how could it be a different crime? It will be described exactly the same way. The Judge will say, you are accused of killing john doe... wait a minute, you've already been accused of that and found innocent.... You're free to go!
Like I just said: IT'S NOT THE SAME CRIME.
Murder, like all criminal charges, depends on a specific TIME and PLACE when that crime was allegedly committed.
So if you are accused of killing someone, and they turn up alive, you can't kill them "again", as that would be a completely new crime.
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Yes, because it would be a different murder. How many times I gotta say this?
You were punished for killing them at that time. If you kill them now, that's a different crime, and you will be punished for that as well.
It's not double jeopardy, because it's not the same crime.
Can we put this in a FAQ or something?
Yes, because it would be a different murder. How many times I gotta say this?
You were punished for killing them at that time. If you kill them now, that's a different crime, and you will be punished for that as well.
It's not double jeopardy, because it's not the same crime.
Can we put this in a FAQ or something?
What you're saying doesn't make much sense. Say the forensic people have determined that the guy died someday at five PM. They prosecute you, find you innocent and you're free. If later it is found out that he died at seven PM, that means that they can prosecute you AGAIN!!! That seems wrong.
Actually, yes it is.
You cannot be tried for committing the same crime you have been convicted/acquitted of a second time, as that is double jeopardy/legal double dipping by the prosecution. Only one trial and trial result per crime, if you please.
Now this part is correct.
It is wrong. You were acquitted of killing that person at all. If new evidence turns up with the circumstances adjusted for greater forensic accuracy, you've still been acquitted already, and cannot be tried again. Even if the greater accuracy points directly at you.
There was a time where my go-to hangover cure was a viewing of Ashley Judd's "Double Jeopardy." It's just the kind of relaxing nonsense the fogged hangover brain craves. I must have seen that movie 25 times before I burned out on it.
There will never be a greater dramatic exploration of the question: can you be convicted for murdering the husband you already were convicted of murdering when he faked his death?
God, someone needs to remake that classic. I think this thread suggests the market is there!
Meanwhile, on topic: just realized Jurati's cold-blooded murder of Maddox, and subsequent annoyance at having to feel bad for a few minutes before just moving on, struck me as a fairly extreme character assassination. This is a man she had an intimate history with! She fully murdered him in a close-up, intimate way! For supporting a cause that she then immediately joined herself, so it was all just a terrible error of judgment!
Jurati was presented as such an upstanding person when we meet her, and to have her so quickly plummet into remorseless, homicidal fool... such a disappointment. I loved her at the start of the season and am just completely revolted with her by the end of it.
I do think they can possibly save it by leaning in and going the cheerful sociopath route with her. Like a sunny version of Emperor Georgiou. Agnes had that one bit in the season one finale, where she's delighted by her capacity for deception, suggesting they might go that way. So maybe what seems now as character assassination will ultimately be part of an interesting arc... we'll see.
There will never be a greater dramatic exploration of the question: can you be convicted for murdering the husband you already were convicted of murdering when he faked his death?
God, someone needs to remake that classic. I think this thread suggests the market is there!
Meanwhile, on topic: just realized Jurati's cold-blooded murder of Maddox, and subsequent annoyance at having to feel bad for a few minutes before just moving on, struck me as a fairly extreme character assassination. This is a man she had an intimate history with! She fully murdered him in a close-up, intimate way! For supporting a cause that she then immediately joined herself, so it was all just a terrible error of judgment!
Jurati was presented as such an upstanding person when we meet her, and to have her so quickly plummet into remorseless, homicidal fool... such a disappointment. I loved her at the start of the season and am just completely revolted with her by the end of it.
I do think they can possibly save it by leaning in and going the cheerful sociopath route with her. Like a sunny version of Emperor Georgiou. Agnes had that one bit in the season one finale, where she's delighted by her capacity for deception, suggesting they might go that way. So maybe what seems now as character assassination will ultimately be part of an interesting arc... we'll see.
I think the worst Character assassination I've ever seen is the Doctor in Voyager's "Equinox", turned into a sadistic psychopath by the tapping of a few keys!!! Because of course there was "Darkling", but at least in that episode he tampered with his program by downloading a few conflicting personalities but here all that Ransom had to do is tap at most five or six keys and voila, the Doctor is ready to dissect Seven without hesitation!!! Chilling!!!
I think that "Latent Image" could be considered an assassination for the Doctor. As a physician, he should have understood the necessity of sacrificing a part for the greater whole, as seen when a doctor amputates a limb. A person with, say, one arm enjoys a lower quality of life than a person with two (unless you like not being able to button your pants), but they stay alive.
I don't know. In "latent image" the Doctor felt remorse and guilt for having chosen Harry Kim over the other one because he was closer to him. IMO that made him more human than before unlike the example that I've given where he's a cold-blooded monster.
Indeed, removing the Doctor's ethical subroutines should not have had the same effect on him as it did with the Equinox's EMH. The Equinox EMH only had Ransom and the crew, with his ethics gone, of course he'd due whatever he asked. But in the Doctor's case, whether he had his ethics or not doesn't change the fact the Seven is still his friend and shipmate while Ransom and the Equinox crew are still his enemies. If anything, removing the Doctor's ethics should have made him more open to the idea of attempting to kill Ransom, not suddenly make him loyal to Ransom and have him willingly operate on Seven and potentially kill her.
It seems the writers took a simplistic view of things believing removing ethics is the same thing as turning someone into a bad guy.
Oh, I agree. And I think Janeway went about it the wrong way when she just led him on and then deleted his memories; full disclosure would have been more respectful. But, the Doctor should have understood that Voyager needed him, and if a certain memory set threatened his destruction, it needed to go. Just as he would have, if no alternative treatment existed, amputated a patient's limb.
