Mr. Kiler Cains is 65 years old. His brother was a decamillionaire, while he was not rich. Mr. Kiler Cains inherited all of his brothers wealth. Even though Mr. Kiler Cains was acquitted of his brother's murder, more and more evidence obtained after the trial points to his guilt. Now Mr. Kiler Cains is charged with Fentanyl trading. He is not charged with murder of which he was acquitted a decade ago. Most evidence points to him being not guilty. As a juror you have three options. Please select one below:
I love hypotheticals, I'll play. The right thing to do is not to find him guilty of a crime he didn't commit, when the evidence that he committed some other crime is not strong enough to convict. However, in some of those situations I wouldn't be against preventing the relative from receiving the inheritance. There might not be enough evidence to put on prison but that does not mean the evidencd is not great enough to prevent the inheritance. I don't believe evidence is an all or nothing thing. Maybe only give him 15% of the inheritance. But yes, this does happen in the legal system; defendants are convicted of a crime that they did not commit to try to get them for another crime they don't have enough evidence of. Personally I am not against the concept of double jeopardy in some extreme situations, but as long as that protection exists, it is wrong to ignore that protection, because it's there for a reason. Most likely the prosecutors might seek to retry the murder case on some other related law. It's a violation of double jeopardy but the courts will let them do it.
If he is guilty of murder then they should prove it. If he is not guilty of selling drugs then he should not be found guilty of it.
I apologize for my inability to respond on Friday. I appreciate that many people believe in Absolute Ethics -- even toward unethical people.
Perhaps you are right -- perhaps sometimes Ethics is absolute. In my opinion, Ethics is like a contract.
If there is a reasonable doubt to his guilt (which is what I presume you are trying to say in the last paragraph), then he should be found not guilty. He shouldn't be punished for a crime he didn't commit.
The argument in the OP is he should be punished for a crime he is likely to have committed but was found not guilty of. The scenario in the OP was what if new evidence emerges after he was found not guilty by a jury.
No double jeopardy, so he gets off. This prevents a prosecutor from harassing a person until he finally gets a conviction. I would rather 10 guilty people to be found not guilty than a single innocent person found guilty.
How do you feel about a prosecutor trying them under a different law, for the same crime? For example, they were found innocent of 1st degree murder so a year later, after additional evidence emerges, the prosecutor tries them for 2nd degree murder, or conspiracy to commit murder, etc. Or how about if someone in one state is found not guilty of having his wife killed, after a long trial in another state, but then he is tried again in his home state for paying someone to kill his wife.
We are a nation of laws, it's what distinguishes us, why we can hold our head higher than others. Sometimes things like this happen but if we allow our values to lower in order to accommodate bad behavior than we become no better than other nations. America doesn't skirt the law, we don't falsely convict to punish for another crime, those are things third world nations do. Not us. We are better than that. And we hold this value for every single citizen of our nation, no matter your race, sex or age, we all have that protection and we all rely on it, it's founded in our Constitution as a right to freedom and justice. I would rather see 1000 slip through the system than to see millions lose that justice we expect. So I would find him innocent of the crime.
Glad you agree. Now I hope you can convince the US courts of that. Under current case precedent you could be tried five different times for the same crime. They're claiming it's not double jeopardy if it's under different jurisdictions or different criminal statutes relating to the same crime, or subtly different aspects of the same crime.
I've posted numerous cases where this happened in the Law & Justice section, including one or two Supreme Court cases. I guess no one cares to go there. Legal matters are kind of a dry subject apparently. Let's face it, your government sidesteps the protections in the Constitution.
