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The Water Cooler
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Stop Ignoring Double Jeopardy
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<blockquote data-quote="Dave70968" data-source="post: 3181169" data-attributes="member: 13624"><p>At the risk of sounding pedantic, I'm going to clarify something: American courts don't find anybody "innocent," just "not guilty," the latter meaning that "the prosecution didn't meet its burden of proof." I mention it because there are some systems that have three possible outcomes: guilty, not guilty, and innocent. The first and last are declarative, the middle is simply "there's not enough evidence to convict," but isn't actually an exoneration. The American "not guilty" is similarly not an exoneration (we don't have provisions for that in our system).</p><p></p><p>There's a big difference between civil court and criminal, both substantially and procedurally. Subtantially, the cases are brought by different parties because the "wronged" party is different in each type of case. In civil court, it's individuals who are wronged. You burn down my house, I'm out a house; hit my car, and my car (and maybe me) is damaged. Criminal cases are different: they're brought by the state on behalf of the people (some jurisdictions even style them as "The People vs. So-and-so," instead of "State vs. So-and-so"). The theory is that your wrongful actions are harmful to an orderly society as a whole, which instituted the government to secure and protect its rights. The standards of proof are different ("preponderance" in civil, "beyond a reasonable doubt" in criminal), and the nature of the remedy is different: cash (or certain limited other means) in civil to directly compensate the party harmed, vs. forfeiture to the state and/or incarceration as punishment: the state doesn't draw benefit or compensation from the punishment (in theory), but punishes your misdeed and deters others (again, in theory).</p><p></p><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Jeopardy_Clause" target="_blank">Wikipedia's article on the Double Jeopardy Clause</a> is pretty good, and discusses several well-known cases (OJ Simpson, McVeigh and Nichols, Rodney King). As a personal point of interest, the article also mentions the <em>Petite</em> policy; when my dad* interned in law school for the Assistant U.S. Attorney's office, he wrote a brief in <a href="https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/358121/united-states-v-bruce-thompson/" target="_blank"><em>United States v. Bruce Thompson</em>, 579 F.2d 1184 (10th Cir. 1978)</a> that the AUSA presented exactly as he wrote it; his citation to <em>Sullivan v. United States</em> (mentioned in paragraph 22) was what swung Judge Holloway's opinion...and Judge Holloway's own clerk didn't find that case. Again, just a personal story--the issue in <em>Thompson</em> wasn't really a substantive double-jeopardy issue, just an internal DOJ policy.</p><p></p><p>* Yes, being a lawyer is a genetic disease. And yes, forty years later, dad's still miffed that his brief was presented exactly as he wrote it, and he got absolutely no credit or mention anywhere, even from the AUSA.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Dave70968, post: 3181169, member: 13624"] At the risk of sounding pedantic, I'm going to clarify something: American courts don't find anybody "innocent," just "not guilty," the latter meaning that "the prosecution didn't meet its burden of proof." I mention it because there are some systems that have three possible outcomes: guilty, not guilty, and innocent. The first and last are declarative, the middle is simply "there's not enough evidence to convict," but isn't actually an exoneration. The American "not guilty" is similarly not an exoneration (we don't have provisions for that in our system). There's a big difference between civil court and criminal, both substantially and procedurally. Subtantially, the cases are brought by different parties because the "wronged" party is different in each type of case. In civil court, it's individuals who are wronged. You burn down my house, I'm out a house; hit my car, and my car (and maybe me) is damaged. Criminal cases are different: they're brought by the state on behalf of the people (some jurisdictions even style them as "The People vs. So-and-so," instead of "State vs. So-and-so"). The theory is that your wrongful actions are harmful to an orderly society as a whole, which instituted the government to secure and protect its rights. The standards of proof are different ("preponderance" in civil, "beyond a reasonable doubt" in criminal), and the nature of the remedy is different: cash (or certain limited other means) in civil to directly compensate the party harmed, vs. forfeiture to the state and/or incarceration as punishment: the state doesn't draw benefit or compensation from the punishment (in theory), but punishes your misdeed and deters others (again, in theory). [URL='https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Jeopardy_Clause']Wikipedia's article on the Double Jeopardy Clause[/URL] is pretty good, and discusses several well-known cases (OJ Simpson, McVeigh and Nichols, Rodney King). As a personal point of interest, the article also mentions the [I]Petite[/I] policy; when my dad* interned in law school for the Assistant U.S. Attorney's office, he wrote a brief in [URL='https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/358121/united-states-v-bruce-thompson/'][I]United States v. Bruce Thompson[/I], 579 F.2d 1184 (10th Cir. 1978)[/URL] that the AUSA presented exactly as he wrote it; his citation to [I]Sullivan v. United States[/I] (mentioned in paragraph 22) was what swung Judge Holloway's opinion...and Judge Holloway's own clerk didn't find that case. Again, just a personal story--the issue in [I]Thompson[/I] wasn't really a substantive double-jeopardy issue, just an internal DOJ policy. * Yes, being a lawyer is a genetic disease. And yes, forty years later, dad's still miffed that his brief was presented exactly as he wrote it, and he got absolutely no credit or mention anywhere, even from the AUSA. [/QUOTE]
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