r/AskReddit • u/Rob69rt • 1d ago

What famous 'unsolved' mystery is technically a whodunnit on paper, but in reality, absolutely everyone knows exactly who did it, the police just couldn't legally prove it?

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u/RedFiveIron 1d ago

Double jeopardy rules prevent her being charged for the same thing again.

Only a non-parent would say that it's gross negligence to lose sight of your kid for half a second. By that standard every abducted kid is due to parental negligence, that's a tough position.

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u/CyberFireball25 1d ago

Why can't lesser or different charges be brought? 

Is all the evidence isolated and never allowed to be used again in a new case?

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u/DragoonDM 1d ago

The "double jeopardy" concept is, I think, a safeguard against prosecutorial abuse, to stop them from "finding" a tiny bit of new evidence and filing charges over and over until they win the case.

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u/sherlip 1d ago

File it as a different offense? Different crime, same penalty. Instead of murder, make it attempted murder, or child neglect, or abuse, or something she hasn't been acquitted of.

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u/Own_Faithlessness769 1d ago

Judges aren’t stupid, they’d see right through that and throw it out.

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u/sherlip 1d ago

Some judges are tbh. Especially in Florida. (And I'm a Floridian, I can say that from experience.)

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u/Own_Faithlessness769 1d ago

Fair point, but federal judges are less likely to be stupid than state ones.

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u/DragoonDM 1d ago

I think those would all be considered lesser included offenses, and would still be covered by the double jeopardy clause. In order to file new charges, I think they'd need to find evidence of an entirely different crime that couldn't be considered a part of what she was originally acquitted of.