Inspired by a movie I watched: If you were falsely convicted of a crime and done the time, should you, upon release, have the right to commit the crime you were falsely convicted for, without being punished?

Well, and just how’s that gonna work for you?
If you are the only one that knows, in their heart, you were truly innocent and the legal system disagreed, well….all you’d gain is a repeat offense.
Then, of course, you would still be guilty of the original offense and the fact that you had already served time for the first conviction would just double your sentence the 2nd time around.
Hardly a smart move, much better to swallow your bitter pill and move on.

Unless you’ve come to enjoy prison life. lol

Of course not.

Why would one want to commit a crime just for the sake of committing a crime?

Double Jeopardy?

The surviving jews should’ve executed the remaining nazis by that logic, not as daft as it sounds then.

@johnpowell You beat me to it! I watched that last night.

You never have the “right” to commit murder, legally speaking. However, if you were convicted of murdering someone when you did not, served your sentence, and killed that same person upon release, they cannot convict you of that same murder again. That’s double jeopardy; a very real law. You can’t just kill anyone and get away with it because you were falsely convicted, though.

It’s probably not a good idea either way, unless you’re badass like Ashley Judd and a Tommy Lee Jones – and let’s face it, who is?

This reminds me of that screwed up logic of some people who are accused of cheating on their partner when they haven’t. “She already thinks I’m doing it, so I might as well. No.

The cloak of immunity that was double jeopardy no longer applies over here, not since 2005.

Interesting.

It still applies in the US. I don’t see it being done away with anytime soon.

If you kill a person you’ve already been convicted of killing on a different day, it’s a separate charge.

Otherwise, it’s like being found guilty of speeding, and then you can never be ticketed again for speeding on that road.

Yeah, I don’t think that’s how that works. :p Interestingly enough, I read in the paper a long time ago about a dude who spent like 20 years in prison for a murder he didn’t do. Eventually, it was discovered that he was falsely accused, and when they released him, the country gave him like ten million dollars or something like that.
Thing is, the guy had been so used to life in jail that he didn’t know what to do with himself while free…so he asked to be put back in jail. They took him back.

…the least they could do, I suppose. O_o Not really related to this, but I thought it was interesting to mention.

@Seek_Kolinahr That’s not the same thing at all. We’re talking about being found guilty of murdering the same person twice, which is impossible. Speeding is hardly comparable.

If the person serves some time and the victim is found to be alive, the sentence would be vacated. If you went and actually killed that person after being released, you could be tried and convicted for it because the false conviction was reversed.

The problem is that it takes a body for most murder cases to go to trial. If there’s no body, and there wouldn’t be if there was no murder, it would be very hard to convict someone of that murder without a confession.

The law is never black and white, though. Judd’s character in the film could’ve been tried and convicted again because she committed the actual murder in a different state. But the actual law does not have any specified number of days/hours/minutes that have to pass before you can be convicted of the same crime written into it. Additionally, if you served the sentence and then went back and actually killed that person, they’d have to deem the first conviction the result of a mistrial, toss it from the person’s record, and the killer could very well get time served. The wrongly accused could also sue for the wrongful conviction.

It wouldn’t be as simple as it was in the movie, no, but the double jeopardy law would come into play in a similar situation. What I’m saying is, you couldn’t be convicted of killing the same person without the initial conviction being addressed first, simply because a person cannot be murdered twice.

No.

No. You were punished so you wouldn’t do what you didn’t do the first time, but then you went out and did it, so obviously the punishment didn’t work the first time so you get to go back to jail and start over.

No. Does anyone have real stats on these kind of crimes or is it all about a movie?

No, the sentence doesn’t wipe out the crime when the crime was real, so when the crime was not, it doesn’t create a vacuum to be filled either.

Sentence may help lead to forgiveness. Forgiveness isn’t wiping out a crime either, it is acceptance and a choice to no longer apply consequences to a crime.