Tagged: Double Jeopardy

The Law Is A Ass

Bob Ingersoll: The Law Is A Ass #378

BROADCHURCH’S LAWYERS COULDN’T HIT THE BROADSIDE OF A CHURCH

broadchurch-full-series-review

Sometimes there’s nothing for it but to put the unpleasantness front and center. This is one of those times. So, here comes an unpleasant:

SPOILER WARNING!

I want to discuss the British police procedural TV show Broadchurch and there’s no way I can do that without massive spoilers on both seasons of the show. Spoilers along the lines of SPOILER ALERT! not just revealing that Darth Vader was Luke’s father but doing it before the Star Wars came out.

Broadchurch is set in the small, seaside British village of Broadchurch, which explains why the show wasn’t called Bexhill-On-Sea. The first season started with the murder of Danny Latimer, a local eleven-year-old local boy then centered on the investigation by Detective Inspector Alec Hardy and Detective Sargent Ellie Miller of said murder. (Wait, who said murder? I thought she only wrote it.) Broadchurch was not a pure procedural. It dealt as much with how the murder tore apart the small, close-knit community.

That tearing-apart aspect came fully into play in the final episode of the first season when DI Hardy learned that the murderer was SPOILER ALERT! Ellie’s husband, Joe. The town of Broadchurch in microcosm was torn apart after Ellie watched Joe’s filmed confession and SPOILER ALERT! beat him up in the police station. The town of Broadchurch in macrocosm was torn apart by the murder then torn apart again in the show’s second season, when SPOILER ALERT! Joe didn’t plead guilty and stood trial for Danny’s murder.

That’s where the law came in. So I guess it’s where I come in, too.

I won’t stress over the niggling legal mistakes that aren’t even worthy of a SPOILER ALERT! such as the fact that the trial judge was wearing a barrister’s wig instead of a judge’s wig, even if legal experts in England did. We’ve got wacking great errors to deal with.

Before the trial began, SPOILER ALERT! Joe’s defense lawyers had Danny Latimer’s body exhumed without telling anyone, even the Latimers. And on rather flimsy grounds. (That is, the grounds for the exhumation were flimsy. The ground of the cemetery was fine old English sod.) I realize things are different in the British criminal justice system; what with the wigs and the “M’luds,” and all. So I did some research. I found an article from the British paper The Daily Mail about Broadchurch’s second season. It answered my questions and confirmed my suspicions.

The body of an English murder victim belongs to the coroner. No coroner would have released Danny’s body without consulting the surviving family, unless said family were suspects in the case; which they weren’t. A spokesperson for England’s Ministry of Justice quoted in The Daily Mail said it was “inconceivable” that the body would have been exhumed in the way shown in the show. And I think the word did mean what he thought it meant.

But that was just the start. When Danny’s mother was cross-examined, defense counsel SPOILER ALERT! asked her about her sex life and her husband’s affair. In America such questions wouldn’t be permitted unless they went to the witness’s credibility. The fact that a woman’s husband was having an affair might affect her gullibility but not her credibility. Legal experts interviewed by The Daily Mail said the questions wouldn’t have been allowed in England either, as they had no connection to the case being tried.

During the trial, SPOILER ALERT! all the witnesses were in the courtroom when the other witnesses testified. Dramatic as hell; we got to see Danny’s parents agonized faces every time something went wrong. But inaccurate as a caveman eating brontoburgers. According to The Daily Mail, British courts, like American courts, require a separation of witnesses http://criminal.lawyers.com/criminal-law-basics/excluding-witnesses-from-the-courtroom.html. Witness aren’t permitted in the courtroom until they’ve testified. That way, no witnesses can hear what other witnesses say and change their testimony to conform it with what had been said before.

But the most egregious error was the SPOILER ALERT! motion to suppress Joe Miller’s confession. (The British called it excluding the statement, not suppressing. Silly Brits, can’t even get their own language right.) After DI Hardy testified about how he arrested Joe and obtained Joe’s confession, defense counsel SPOILER ALERT! got Hardy to admit that DS Miller physically assaulted Joe while he was in custody. Then counsel argued that the police had beaten the confession out of Joe, so it should be excluded.

DI Hardy had testified that Joe confessed before DS Miller assaulted him. Moreover, the confession was filmed, so the judge could see that Joe Miller didn’t have any signs of a physical assault at the time he confessed. Despite all this, SPOILER ALERT! the judge agreed she could not discount the possibility that the injuries were sustained before Joe Miller arrived at the police station, suppressed the confession, and ordered the jury to disregard it.

This whole proceeding was the Lex Luthor of dash; balderdash.

First there’s the matter of the suppression motion being heard in open court in front of the jury. Suppression motions are questions of law not evidentiary matter. No American suppression hearing would be held in front of the jury, the way it happened on Broadchurch. No English hearing would either according to the attorney interviewed by The Daily Mail.

More egregious was the timing of the suppression motion; after the trial started. In the United States, defense counsel wouldn’t even have been permitted to make a motion to suppress a confession after trial had started. Motions to suppress evidence must be filed before trial starts. See, if the trial has started and the prosecution loses the motion to suppress, it’s stuck. The trial court won’t grand a prosecution motion for a months-long continuance, while the prosecution takes an interlocutory appeal on the suppression ruling. But the prosecution can’t wait until the trial ends before appealing the suppression ruling. Assuming the prosecution lost the trial – a totally warranted assumption; if the prosecution won the trial, it would bother appealing – Double Jeopardy would prevent it from trying the defendant a second time, should it win the appeal. So defense attorneys are required to file motions to suppress before trial starts. That way, the prosecution can appeal the decision before jeopardy attaches and, should it win the appeal, still be able to try the defendant.

England, apparently, doesn’t have the same requirement. However, the lawyer interviewed by the ubiquitous Daily Mail said that the suppression matter would still have been settled before trial started. Neither the defense nor the prosecution would want to start a trial with this question mark over the case.

Most egregious was the fact that the judge granted the motion to suppress Joe’s confession. Judges don’t like to suppress confessions; especially confessions of confessed child killers. No judge in her right mind would agree with the defense counsel argument that “we cannot discount the possibility that the injuries were sustained before his arrival at the police station,” when the video evidence before her clearly showed that not only did Joe receive his injuries after he arrived at the station, he received them after he confessed.

Sure the judge was wearing a barrister’s wig instead of a judge’s wig. But that only means she wasn’t in her right wig, not that she wasn’t in her right mind. This ruling was shakier than a selfie in an earthquake.

You’ll be glad to know the attorney quoted in The Daily Mail agreed that no judge would have excluded Joe’s confession. Even if you’re not glad, I certainly am. I’d hate to think my grasp of the law was as tenuous as Broadchurch’s.

I had a problem with Broadchurch’s second season on from a legal point of view. I also had problems with it from a story point of view. An underlying subplot of Broadchurch’s first season was that SPOILER ALERT! DI Hardy was trying to restore his career after he failed to bring to justice a different child killer from an earlier case. Broadchurch’s first season was also a story of Hardy’s redemption when he solved the murder of Danny Latimer. However in the final episode of Broadchurch season two, SPOILER ALERT! the jury found Joe Miller not guilty. This demeaned the whole redeemed story of the first season, because, once again, DI Hardy failed to secure the conviction of a child murderer.

Still, Broadchurch’s second season wasn’t as bad as it could have been. It wasn’t, for example, Gracepoint, the American version of Broadchurch. Gracepoint managed to undercut all of the themes in Broadchurch, not just the redemption one, by SPOILER ALERT! having a completely different solution and a different murderer.

Broadchurch’s second season also wasn’t as bad as the second season of True Detective. Broadchurch’s second season only undercut the themes of the first season, True Detective’s second season tarnished the memory of the first season by being lousy.

Oops. Guess I should have put a SPOILER ALERT! there.

The Law Is A Ass

Bob Ingersoll: The Law Is A Ass #368

DISMISSING A CASE WITH PREJUDICE IS INJUDICIOUS

First of all, when a lawyer gets a case dismissed with prejudice, that doesn’t mean it’s because the lawyer was the new, reconfigured Atticus Finch.

So what does “dismissed with prejudice” mean then? That’s the question I promised to answer last week, while discussing Daredevil v.4 #15.1, because a judge dismissed a criminal case against Matt Murdock’s client with prejudice. And here I am this week doing what I promised to do last week by answering the question.

Not all lawsuits end in a jury verdict. In fact, to tell the truth, most of them don’t. (Jeez, doing what I promised to do and telling the truth; that’s enough to get me kicked out of my lawyer in good standing status. If I were still a lawyer or ever had a good standing.) Most cases end long before a trial or a jury verdict. Many end with some sort of compromise deal being reached between the two parties. Either a settlement in a civil case or a plea bargain in a criminal case. Others end with one of the sides filing a motion to dismiss the case and the judge granting that motion. Still others end in other ways, but as we’re talking about motions to dismiss today, we won’t bother with those still other ways.

Either side can file a motion to dismiss, the plaintiffs or defendants in civil cases or the prosecutors or defendants in criminal cases. (Please note, in a lawsuit – both civil and criminal lawsuits – the party bringing the suit is the plaintiff. Plaintiffs in criminal cases are usually called prosecutors or the state, but they’re still the plaintiffs. For the sake of convenience, I’m going to use the term “plaintiff” to refer to both civil plaintiffs and prosecutors.) Usually one side files the motion to dismiss because there is a weakness in the plaintiff’s case. Plaintiffs, for example, might file a motion to buy some more time to develop their case. Defendants can file to dismiss, if they feel that the charging papers – either a civil complaint or a criminal indictment – fail to set forth an adequate case to present to a jury.

When a judge is presented with a motion to dismiss, the judge can either grant the motion or deny it. Most judges grant the motion to dismiss, if for no other reason than that it gets the case of the judge’s docket. Do judges like to get cases off their dockets? Does Sonny the Cuckoo Bird like Coco Puffs? If a judge grants the motion to dismiss, the judge can grant it in one of two ways. The judge can grant the motion with pride – judges do almost everything with pride – but either with or without prejudice.

Ah five paragraphs into the column and finally we’re reaching the Clara Peller part. You know, where the beef is.

If a judge grants a motion to dismiss without prejudice , that means that the plaintiff can file the case again in the future. If, however, the judge grants the motion to dismiss with prejudice, that means the plaintiff cannot file the case again. The plaintiff can appeal the judge’s dismissal with prejudice. But absent an appeals court overturning the dismissal with prejudice, the plaintiff is barred from ever filing that case in the future.

Common reasons for dismissing a case with prejudice include fraud on the part of the plaintiffs or the case being barred by the statute of limitations or the case being barred by res judicata because the plaintiffs brought the same matter to trial in an earlier case and lost. There are, of course more reasons. Lots more. (Seriously, you think there’s actually a legal principle that’s so simple it could be answered completely with only three examples? The law is large, it contains multitudes. And that’s just the tax code.)

In the Daredevil story, a murder charge against one Luiz Sifuentes was dismissed with prejudice, meaning the state of New York could not refile the same charges against Mr. Sifuentes in the future. Usually in criminal cases a case is dismissed with prejudice for one of a few reasons. If the defendant was already tried for the same charges and found not guilty, the defendant can’t be tried on those charges a second time because of the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment. So if the state were to bring the same charges a second time and the trial court dismissed the case because of double jeopardy, that would be a dismissal with prejudice.

Another dismissal with prejudice would be if the state brought charges after the statute of limitations expired. In that case, the state would be barred from ever filing charges again, because of the statute of limitations.

Of if the defendant’s case were dismissed because the state didn’t bring the defendant to trial in compliance with the Speedy Trial clause of the Sixth Amendment that would also be a dismissal with prejudice, because the speedy trial violation would prevent the state from pursuing the charges in the future.

Those are some of the major reasons that a criminal case can be dismissed with prejudice. There are, naturally others. Multitudes, remember?

In the Sifuentes case, Sifuentes was charged with shooting a man to death in Central Park. Daredevil investigated the case and caught the two other people who were actually guilty of the crime. These two confessed to the murder after their fingerprints were found on the bullets in the cylinder of the murder weapon. They also admitted they didn’t know Luiz Sifuentes. So the judge dismissed the case against Sifuentes with prejudice, meaning that the state could never bring these charges against Mr. Sifuentes again.

That’s unlikely. The trial court wouldn’t want to do something which precluded the state from ever filing the charges again. What, for example, would happen if the other two defendants recanted their stories and said Sifuentes was also in on the murder? Or what if the state learned that the other two defendants were friends with Sifuentes and lied about not knowing him to get their friend out of trouble? In either scenario, the state would want to bring murder charges against Sifuentes again, but wouldn’t be able to do so, because the case had been dismissed with prejudice. So it’s not likely that the trial court would have granted Sifuentes’s motion to dismiss with prejudice, as it wouldn’t want to preclude the state from pursuing a case against Sifuentes, should new facts establishing Sifuentes’s actual guilt ever come to light.

What would probably have happened in the Sifuentes case is that the judge would have granted the motion to dismiss, based on the fact that Mr. Sifuentes appeared to be innocent of the charges. But it would have dismissed the case without prejudice. The state of New York would then have to decide whether it wanted to pursue a case against Sifuentes. If it believed that he was actually innocent of the crime, then it wouldn’t file the charges again and the matter would be over. But if, after further investigation, the State felt that Sifuentes was actually involved in the killing, it would file the charges against him a second time.

The trial court wouldn’t want to prejudge the state’s future ability to prosecute Mr. Sifuentes, so it wouldn’t grant a dismissal with prejudice. Oh and one more thing, don’t confuse prejudging with deciding which hybrid car to buy. Prius judging is entirely different.

THE LAW IS A ASS #320: PETER’S GUNNING FOR THE FIFTH

PG60When I was younger, so much, much, much younger than today, there was a television show. Then, when I was a little older, they added a second channel and we got a second show. Eventually that led to four channels and lots more shows. One of those shows was Peter Gunn.

Peter Gunn was a private eye show that aired on NBC  then ABC from September 22, 1958 until September 18, 1961. It starred Craig Stevens as the eponymous P.I. and is probably best remembered for its jazz sound track and the theme song written by Henry Mancini. Even if you’ve never seen an episode of the show, I’ll bet you’ve heard the theme song.

I’ll also bet you don’t think I’m here to write about a TV theme song. There, you’d be correct. I’m here to write about the show. Specifically, Season 1, Episode 28, the April 6, 1959 episode, “Pay Now, Kill Later.”

The episode started with a SPOILER WARNING. Okay, it didn’t start with a spoiler warning. Like many episodes of Peter Gunn did, it started with a murder. It didn’t continue with a Spoiler Warning, either, but I have to. Because in order to discuss the legal ramifications of the episode, I have to give away details of the plot including its ending. So here goes.

John Abbot played a scientist who discovered a new miracle fabric in Manchester, England in 1945. But Abbot didn’t want to share the expected profits of this miracle fabric with his business partner played by Torin Thatcher. So Abbot hired a man who looked a little like him to be a caretaker of the textile mill he and Thatcher owned. Abbot tricked the man into wearing Abbot’s clothes then knocked him unconscious, left the man on the floor of the textile mill, and blew it up. All to frame Thatcher. Thatcher was convicted of insurance fraud for blowing up the mill and manslaughter in his partner’s “death.” (That’s what the show said, manslaughter. Personally, I don’t know why it wouldn’t have been felony murder or even premeditated murder, but I didn’t get a chance to ask the show, what with it being a TV show and rather nonresponsive and all.)

Fourteen years later, Thatcher was released from prison. He had always suspected that John Abbot wasn’t dead and had English detectives trace Abbot to America. Thatcher came to America and hired  Peter Gunn to track down Abbot. Abbot had changed his name and was now the successful head of his own textile firm, but Gunn tracked him down anyway.

When Gunn reported to Thatcher, Thatcher revealed his real purpose; he wanted to kill Abbot for ruining his life. He said he wasn’t worried because, he’d already been convicted of killing Abbot and under the Double Jeopardy Clause of the United States Constitution, he couldn’t be tried for the same crime – killing Abbot – a second time.

Gunn and his police liaison – back then all TV P.I.s had police liaisons just like all sit-com families had wacky next-door neighbors – Lt. Jacoby learned that Abbot was going to exhibit at a fabric show which was conveniently in the same unnamed river front city where Gunn operated. They went to the show to arrest Abbot for murdering the caretaker. But Thatcher also showed up with a gun so he kill could kill Abbot. Gunn and Jacoby tried to talk Thatcher out of this. While they did this, Abbot threw a bolt of cloth at them and bolted himself.

A gunfight ensued, as it did so often in Peter Gunn and virtually every other TV P.I show of the era. Abbot, who had his own gun, shot at Gunn and Jacoby. Jacoby and Gunn shot at Abbot. Then Abbot ran out of bullets and, rather than characteristically throwing his gun at Gunn, just tried to make a break for it. That’s when Thatcher shot and killed Abbot.  Thatcher surrendered to Jacoby and Gunn said, “It should make an interesting trial.”

Not really. It would have been a pretty straight forward trial. Thatcher killed Abbot in front of a respected P.I., a police lieutenant, and several other eyewitness; including the, in the 50s,  stereotypical screaming woman. And Thatcher had no defense.

He had no defense under Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth, because it didn’t apply to his case. As Gunn and Jacoby pointed out, the Double Jeopardy clause commands that a man cannot be tried for the same crime two times.  But Thatcher’s killing of Abbot wasn’t the same crime. After being framed, Thatcher had been convicted of killing Abbot in Manchester, England back in 1945. That wouldn’t apply to his actually killing Abbot in America in 1959. To quote the show’s accurate statement, “It’s a new and separate crime. Another time, another place.”

Nice to know that this low-budget half-hour TV show from 1959 managed to get the law correct, considering Double Jeopardy, the big budget 1999 movie starring Tommy Lee Jones and Ashley Judd, with basically the same premise got it all wrong. Repeatedly.

See Double Jeopardy doesn’t actually apply to the crime charged, that is what penal code violation was committed – in this case murder. Double Jeopardy applies to the criminal act that was committed. If you kill a man in 1945 that’s one criminal act. If you kill a man in1959, that’s a separate criminal act. You may get charged under the same statute, but you’ve committed two distinct and different criminal acts. You haven’t committed the same crime, you’ve violated the same statute two different times.

Even if the victim of both crimes happens to be the same man, because you didn’t really kill him the first time around, it doesn’t matter; it’s still two distinct acts and two distinct crimes for which you can be prosecuted two distinct times. Oh, you may be able to sue for wrongful imprisonment for the first murder prosecution, as you obviously didn’t commit that murder, what with the purported victim being alive and all. But you’d be enjoying your money in prison after being convicted of the second murder.

Suppose Baby Face Braunschweiger and the Light Fingered Five Minus Two rob the Frostbite Falls Bank in 1961, then are caught and convicted. Does that mean that, after they’re released, they get to rob the Frostbite Falls Bank any time they like with impunity, because they’ve already been convicted of that crime? No. They have been convicted of the crime once, but each time they rob the bank, they’re committing a new act. They may be breaking the same law, but they’re breaking it a second or third or fourth time. Even under Double Jeopardy, they can be prosecuted a second or third or fourth time. One prosecution for each new criminal act they commit.

And, in case you were wondering, because I said “Thatcher has no defense,” Thatcher can’t use self-defense in his trial, either. Yes, Abbot had been shooting at him and Gunn, and Jacoby. But there are two problems with him using self-defense. First, you can’t use self-defense if you are responsible for putting yourself in jeopardy in the first place. You can’t start a bar fight with someone then, when your opponent hits you back, get to claim self-defense when you hit him back for hitting you back. When Thatcher confronted Abbot with a gun and said he intended to kill Abbot, he initiated the confrontation. In this scenario, Abbot would be able to shoot at Thatcher in self-defense, but Thatcher wouldn’t be able to shoot back.

Second, when Thatcher shot Abbot, Abbot was out of bullets and running away. At that point, he no longer presented an immediate threat of bodily harm that necessitated any defense. So, again, self-defense wouldn’t apply.

I offer this week’s column as a public service. If you’re thinking of framing yourself for a murder that didn’t happen so that you can be convicted and go to prison, in the hopes that years later, you can then murder the still-living victim for real and not be prosecuted because of Double Jeopardy; don’t. That defense won’t work.

Insanity, on the other hand…