Hacker Cinema
Double Jeopardy
1999 · Film · 105 min
Directed by Bruce Beresford
Libby Parsons, wrongly convicted of her husband Nick's murder, thinks he is still alive. She survives the long years in prison with two burning desires sustaining her -- finding her son and solving the mystery that destroyed her once-happy life. Standing between her and her quest, however, is her parole officer, Travis Lehman. Libby poses a challenge to the cynical officer, one that forces him to face up to his own failings while pitting him against his superior and law enforcement colleagues, as she plunges into a desperate fight for justice, survival, and revenge.
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Actually in the movie [SPOILERS AHEAD] a wealthy man, wanting to start a new life, decides to fake his death and frame his wife for his murder.
His wife is subsequently tried for the murder that she did not commit, and found guilty. She then goes to prison and serves out the sentence for this murder. While in prison she learns that her husband is not actually dead and instead had framed her in order to start a new life. So after she is released from prison, having completed the sentence for her crime, she then proceeds to track down and publicly murder her husband.
Because of Double Jeopardy, she can not be tried again for the same crime of murdering her husband. She had already been found guilty of it and had already served the sentence for the crime. She argues that it is not possible to murder the same person twice. So she is simply acting on the crime that she had already been convicted and punished for.
If she were to go murder her friend or colleague after getting out of prison that would be a different murder and Double Jeopardy wouldn't apply. But murdering the husband that she has already served the sentence for is the same crime she already was found guilty of and can not be convicted of again.
A Famous REAL LIFE example of this would be OJ Simpson. He was found NOT GUILTY in the 1994 murders of his ex-wife and friend. Since then he has basically publicly confessed to having murdered them (via an interview with FOX). He has also written a book where he writes in detail how he "would have" murdered them. His book publisher has also come out and claimed that he admitted to the murder to his publisher. The reason he can be so careless about these confessions is because he can not be tried for this crime again. He was already tried for it and found "not guilty" so even if new evidence (or a full-blown confession) comes to light, he can not be tried for it again under the protection of Double Jeopardy.
Though there is a dumb movie called "double jeopardy" where the premise is that it works that way.