The fact that the movie Double Jeopardy exists tells us that a lot of people don't know what double jeopardy means legally. Hell, even the former chairman of the New York Bar Association asked Binger if he would appeal Kyle Rittenhouse's unanimous not guilty verdict, apparently not knowing that you can't do that.
Still, there is a horrifying loophole in double jeopardy that has already destroyed and even taken innocent lives.
A detail that's present in both of the cases of Ledell Lee and Anthony Broadwater is that they were convicted in their second trials. In both cases, the first trial resulted in a hung jury and the judge declared a mistrial. In that case, the accused can be tried -- put in jeopardy -- again.
In the aforementioned cases, this wrinkle in the law destroyed the lives of one clearly innocent man and took the life of a plausibly innocent man.
Broadwater was finally exonerated last year after spending more than a decade in prison and forty years on the sex offender registry for a rape that he didn't commit. Lee was executed for a murder that he likely didn't commit; but, his appeals failed because the DA refused to look at DNA evidence that produced reasonable doubt. Namely, the DNA on the murder weapon wasn't Lee's.
If we really believe in Blackstone's Ratio, as we should, this is a loophole that must be closed.
