336
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2026
336 points (99.7% liked)
Luigi Mangione
2848 readers
42 users here now
A community to post anything related to Luigi Mangione.
Please respect Lemmy.world ToS. Don't plot who should be murdered next in this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
This is the half I do know and also why I'm still lost!🤬
Double jeopardy is being charged with the same crime twice.
His lawyers are arguing that because he has already pled guilty to the federal charges of “interstate stalking resulting in death,” and “cyber stalking resulting in death” that the state charges of second degree murder, weapons possession and false identification should be dismissed.
The state prosecutors are arguing that the state charges are different enough that they should be allowed to go forward with the state trial as well.
Usually all the parts of a single crime that result in separate charges count as the same incident for purposes of double jeopardy.
Orange hater here: it’s worth pointing out that the federal charges came after the pedopres put pressure on the DOJ to ensure that there would be federal charges on top of the state charges.
Anything the orange turd touches dies.
The honest answer is basically you can't be tried twice for the same crime. Say someone is found dead, the police think you did it, you go on trial and found innocent, the police can't just put you on another trial hoping for a different verdict.
What about appeals? In my country you will usually start your case in the city court and can appeal the result to the state court. If it is a special case without clear precedent, you can get approval to try your case at the supreme court. In some edge cases city courts might say you have to start in the state court, but you always get at least one appeal. In very special cases a city court might say you have to start in the state court, but then you can still appeal to the supreme court without approval.
It is not rare for a higher court to reverse the verdict of a lower court completely if the higher court interpreted the law differently. In that case the lower courts will use that as precedence for future cases whether it will be a reversal of the guilty verdict or the punishment.
In America you can't appeal someone being found not guilty you only appeal a guilty verdict
Huh weird, TIL. In Denmark both the prosecution and the defence can appeal any verdict/punishment. But you only have 14 days to decide whether you want to appeal.
It would be fairly awful given the circumstances. We have a history of faulty and overzealous prosecutions especially against black and poor people. For any given offense there are essentially 3 sorts of sentences. The sentence they will threaten you with in hopes of getting you to plea even if innocent say something absurd like 20 years, the "deal" you may be given which could be 3 months and the punishment for making them actually go to trial which may be 3 years.
Theoretically everyone is entitled to representation but you may not qualify for free help unless you are desperately poor and the quality of the free help may be so bad its worse than nothing. It's normal for unsuccessful prosecution to cost anything from thousands to hundreds of thousands depending on complexity of case. Ultimately virtually all cases are settled with a plea including cases which are so weak its hit or miss if they would have secured a conviction or sometimes cases so weak there was no chance of conviction but scared people accept it. Especially if its a case in which they get no actual time in jail they just agree to pay the government continually for years and go to jail if they ever get in trouble. Hell some people plea because the alternative is spending months in jail although innocent because they cannot afford to pay to get out but they get out immediately with a plea but agree to get robbed by the government for years.
In fact there is a sort of plea you can enter where you don't admit you did anything wrong but agree to go to jail anyway.
So if you understand just how fucked up our system is imagine if they can just keep going after going all the way to trial and definitively losing.
It's hilarious that our pres talks about shithole countries whilst presiding over one.
In the US, the prosecution can appeal sentencing and pre-trial, but once you get to 'not guilty' or 'guilty', all prosecution associated with a crime is no longer constitutional.
However, you can get a civil trial after a not-guilty criminal trial (OJ Simpson was 'not guilty' in criminal court and became untouchable, but was found to have killed under civil court and had to pay the victims families).
From a prosecution perspective, the federal charges were a huge mistake. Nothing about the crime qualified it as 'federal homicide', so they had to settle for lesser charges. Normally the DOJ would back off and let the state handle it because it firmly falls in their jurisdiction, but of course this DOJ wanted to throw its weight around and it backfired on them.
Civil courts also have a much lower bar for evidence, only requiring it be more likely than not that you're at fault, while criminal courts demand the jury be all but certain you're guilty
same in australia.
As the accused you can appeal. So if you found guilty and then there is new evidence, better science, an impartial jury etc you can appeal and argue you are innocent. But if you are found innocent the state can't do the same.
Let's say there's a murder 5 years before dna evidence is discovered. The state accuses someone and puts them on trial and a verdict is declared. Now dna evidence is discovered. If the person was found guilty they can file an appeal saying based on this new dna evidence they can prove they are are innocent. If the person was found innocent however the state can not file an appeal saying based on this new DNA evidence now we can prove that person did it.
State gets one shot at proving you guilty, you get multiple to prove you're innocent.
It's the same here, but the state can appeak the verdict within a certain short period. The verdict is only final once there is no more room for appeals or the period to make an appeal has passed.
I am not a lawyer but in the US I believe once the verdict of not guilty is given the state is done. For example the oj Simpson case. Almost everyone agrees he likely did it but the jury gave the verdict not guilty because, according to interviews after, the state didn't provide enough evidence. They can't go back and say "sorry our lawyer was bad at his job, let's do a new trial". He was released and didn't face any criminal charges for the murder. Fun fact the Kardashians initially got famous/rich because the original father was one of oj's defense attorneys. Now they family of the victim later sued for emotional damage and won and he was also later arrested for other crimes but the criminal case of him killing his wife could/can't ever go back on trial.
To be fair, this sounds better than it works, as your appeal may take a lot of time to actually free you, even after the appeal is successful
100% true but I was trying to explain the idea of double jeopardy then he brought up appeals so briefly tried to explain how that works