Double Jeopardy | |
---|---|
![]() Theatrical release poster | |
Directed by | Bruce Beresford |
Written by | David Weisberg Douglas Cook |
Produced by | Leonard Goldberg |
Starring | |
Cinematography | Peter James |
Edited by | Mark Warner |
Music by | Normand Corbeil |
Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
Release date |
|
Running time | 105 minutes |
Country | United States [1] |
Language | English |
Budget | $40 million [2] |
Box office | $177.8 million [3] |
Double Jeopardy is a 1999 American crime adventure thriller film directed by Bruce Beresford, and starring Ashley Judd, Tommy Lee Jones, and Bruce Greenwood. Released on September 24, the film received mixed reviews from critics and grossed $177 million.
Libby and Nick Parsons are wealthy residents of Whidbey Island, Washington. Libby's friend Angela offers to look after their four-year-old son Matty so they can spend a romantic weekend sailing. Libby awakens to find blood everywhere and Nick missing. The Coast Guard arrive and find Libby holding a bloody knife.
Although Nick's body is not found, Libby is convicted of murder. Her motive is assumed to be a $2 million life insurance policy and her alleged knowledge that Nick was under investigation for embezzlement. Not wanting Matty to become a ward of the state, she asks Angela to adopt him while she is in prison. When Angela stops bringing Matty to visit, Libby tracks Angela to San Francisco and calls her. During their conversation, Nick enters and Matty yells, "Daddy!"; Libby realizes that Nick faked his death. After failing to get investigative help, Margaret, a fellow inmate and former lawyer, tells Libby to get paroled for good behavior by falsely claiming remorse for "killing" Nick. Once free, Libby can kill Nick with impunity due to the Double Jeopardy Clause in the US Constitution.
After six years in prison, Libby is paroled to a halfway house under the supervision of parole officer Travis Lehman, a former law professor whose wife and daughter left him due to his alcoholism. To search for Nick, Libby violates curfew and is caught breaking into Matty's old school on Whidbey Island to get Angela's records. As Lehman takes Libby back to prison, she grabs his gun and swims away in Puget Sound. She visits her mother who gives her cash and her truck.
Libby uses Angela's Social Security number to learn her address in Colorado. There she hears from Angela's former neighbor that Angela, under a different name, died three years earlier in a natural gas explosion. A picture in the paper reveals a painting by Wassily Kandinsky owned by Nick, which Libby is able to trace to New Orleans through an art gallery. At the gallery, Lehman almost catches her, but she rams his car and destroys it before driving away. She flies to New Orleans and finds Nick running a small luxury hotel under the alias Jonathan Devereaux.
Libby confronts Nick during a fund-raising auction at his hotel and demands he return Matty in exchange for her walking away. Nick claims that he faked his death to avoid prison and provide her and Matty with the insurance money, not believing she would be convicted, and that Angie's death was an accident. Libby scoffs at his lies. During their conversation she sees Lehman arrive at the hotel and walks out. Lehman tells "Jonathan" that Libby believes he is her dead ex-husband and informs the local police that she is in the area.
Libby arranges to meet Nick at Lafayette Cemetery to get Matty. Nick hires a boy to lure Libby to a mausoleum, where Nick knocks Libby out and locks her in a coffin with a corpse. She shoots the hinges off the coffin lid with Lehman's gun, pushes it off, and escapes. Meanwhile, Lehman is in the office of "Jonathan" and notices the Kandinsky artwork that Libby was searching for in the gallery. Now unsure of Libby's guilt, he tells his boss in Washington state to fax him the driver's license for "Nicholas Parsons".
Lehman intercepts Libby and she breaks down sobbing. He then goes to Nick's hotel, where he reveals to Nick that he knows his true identity. After Lehman agrees to take a bribe of $1 million, Nick admits to "murdering" Libby. Libby emerges with Lehman's gun and both she and Lehman tell Nick that she can kill him with impunity because of the double jeopardy rule. However, instead of shooting Nick, she puts a bullet through the Kandinsky. Nick tells her where Matty is, Lehman reveals that he has recorded Nick's confession, and Nick pulls a gun, shooting Lehman in the shoulder. In the ensuing struggle, Nick is about to shoot Lehman again, but Libby recovers her gun and kills Nick. Lehman insists they go back to Washington to win her pardon. They later find Matty at a boarding school in Georgia, where he immediately recognizes his mother and they embrace.
After Michelle Pfeiffer, Meg Ryan and Brooke Shields all declined the role, Jodie Foster was attached to star in the film as Libby Parsons and Bruce Beresford met with her several times about the script:
She said to me once, when we were having... not an argument, we had different points of view over something, and she said, "We'll have to do it my way, I'm afraid." And I said, "Why, Jodie?" And she said, 'Because I'm so intelligent. I'm such an intelligent person that there is no point in disagreeing with me because I'm always right." I thought she was joking, but she wasn't! [laughs] She had this extraordinary opinion of her own IQ. [4]
Double Jeopardy was filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia in mid-1998. [5]
On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds an approval rating of 28% based on 87 reviews and an average rating of 4.5/10. The site's critics consensus reads: "A talented cast fails to save this unremarkable thriller." [6] On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 40 out of 100 based on 30 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". [7] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale. [8]
Roger Ebert gave the film two and a half stars out of four, and said "This movie was made primarily in the hopes that it would gross millions and millions of dollars, which probably explains most of the things that are wrong with it." [9] Leonard Maltin gave the film 3 out of 4 stars, calling it "slick entertainment". [10] Mick LaSalle from the San Francisco Chronicle wrote that the film is a "well-acted diversion, directed by Bruce Beresford ( Driving Miss Daisy ) with an intelligent grasp of the moment-to-moment emotion". [11] For her performance in the film Ashley Judd won Favorite Actress at the 6th Blockbuster Entertainment Awards. [12]
Award | Category | Subject | Result |
---|---|---|---|
MTV Movie Award | Best Female Performance | Ashley Judd | Nominated |
Blockbuster Entertainment Awards | Favorite Actress – Suspense | Ashley Judd | Won |
Favorite Actor – Suspense | Tommy Lee Jones | Nominated | |
Favorite Supporting Actor – Suspense | Bruce Greenwood | Nominated |
The film spent three weeks as the No. 1 film. It grossed $116 million in the US and $61 million overseas. [3]
The film incorrectly implies that the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment gives someone a free pass to commit a subsequent crime if they are wrongfully convicted. As the newspaper column "The Straight Dope" pointed out: "a crime, for double jeopardy purposes, consists of a specific set of facts. Change the facts and you've got a new crime [...] no one would believe that a person convicted of beating Richard Roe to a pulp on December 8th could avoid another conviction for tracking down poor Rich in February and whaling on him again." [13] In the case of homicide, which cannot naturally be committed against the same person twice, it may give the impression that the first, wrongful conviction would preclude a factually correct second one; legally, this is not the case. The second prosecution could result in a retrial for the first conviction, since the veracity of that verdict would be undermined by known facts. However, murder is a state crime so, in Libby's case, a prosecution of her for shooting Nick to death in the state of Louisiana would not be affected by her conviction for stabbing him to death in Washington, the states being separate sovereigns.
In jurisprudence, double jeopardy is a procedural defence that prevents an accused person from being tried again on the same charges following an acquittal or conviction and in rare cases prosecutorial and/or judge misconduct in the same jurisdiction. Double jeopardy is a common concept in criminal law – in civil law, a similar concept is that of res judicata. The double jeopardy protection in criminal prosecutions bars only an identical prosecution for the same offence; however, a different offence may be charged on identical evidence at a second trial. Res judicata protection is stronger – it precludes any causes of action or claims that arise from a previously litigated subject matter.
Kiss of Death is a 1947 American film noir directed by Henry Hathaway and written by Ben Hecht and Charles Lederer from a story by Eleazar Lipsky. The story revolves around an ex-con played by Victor Mature and his former partner-in-crime, Tommy Udo. The movie also starred Brian Donlevy and introduced Coleen Gray in her first billed role. The film has received critical praise since its release, with two Academy Award nominations.
Reena Virk was a 14-year-old Canadian girl who was beaten and killed by a group of teenagers in Saanich, British Columbia, Canada. Her status as a victim of bullying prior to her murder attracted substantial media scrutiny in Canada. Six teenagers were tried and convicted for their participation in her death. The Globe and Mail commented at the time that her case was "elevated into a national tragedy". A pair of Canadian sociologists have described the case as a watershed moment for a "moral panic" over girl violence by the Canadian public in the late 1990s.
Alpha Dog is a 2006 American crime drama film written and directed by Nick Cassavetes. It is based on the true story of the kidnapping and murder of Nicholas Markowitz in 2000. The film features an ensemble cast that includes Ben Foster, Shawn Hatosy, Emile Hirsch, Christopher Marquette, Sharon Stone, Justin Timberlake, Anton Yelchin, and Bruce Willis.
True Crime is a 1999 American mystery thriller film directed by Clint Eastwood, and based on Andrew Klavan's 1995 novel of the same name. Eastwood also stars in the film as a journalist covering the execution of a death row inmate, only to discover that the convict may actually be innocent.
The Contract is a 2006 German-American action thriller film directed by Bruce Beresford and written by television writer Stephen Katz and John Darrouzet. The Contract stars Morgan Freeman as professional assassin Frank Carden and John Cusack as a teacher who gets entangled into his latest assignment during a camp trip with his son. Released direct to video in the United States and Europe, The Contract received little critical notice despite its high-profile cast.
Hell's Kitchen is a 1939 thriller Warner Bros. film starring The Dead End Kids and Ronald Reagan.
Bruce Allan Burrell was an Australian convicted kidnapper and double murderer, who in 2006 was sentenced to a term of life imprisonment plus 44 years for the 1995 murder of 74-year-old Dorothy Davis and the 1997 murder of 39-year-old Kerry Whelan, neither of whom were ever found, with Burrell not revealing the location of his victims' bodies. Burrell died at the Prince of Wales Hospital at Randwick, whilst still in prison custody on 4 August 2016, aged 63, from lung and liver cancer.
The Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides: "[N]or shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb..." The four essential protections included are prohibitions against, for the same offense:
Please Murder Me! is a 1956 American film noir directed by Peter Godfrey and starring Angela Lansbury, Raymond Burr and Dick Foran. The film contains an incomplete copyright notice omitting mention of its claimant and has fallen into the public domain.
Paul Warner Powell was an American who was executed for the murder of his friend Stacie Reed, 16, in 1999. He also raped, strangled, and stabbed the girl's sister Kristie, 14, who survived. Following the vacation of his capital murder conviction on appeal, Powell wrote letters boasting about his crimes under the mistaken belief that he was exempt from punishment by the principle of double jeopardy. His letters were used as evidence against him in a second trial that resulted in his execution in 2010.
The Lone Wolf in London is a 1947 American mystery crime film directed by Leslie Goodwins and starring Gerald Mohr, Nancy Saunders and Eric Blore. The picture features the fictional Scotland Yard detective the Lone Wolf who travels to London, and solves the mystery of some missing jewels. It was the penultimate Lone Wolf film, followed by The Lone Wolf and His Lady in 1949, and the last for Mohr in the lead role.
This is a list of notable overturned convictions in Canada.
Under the Gun is a 1951 American crime film noir film directed by Ted Tetzlaff and starring Richard Conte, Audrey Totter and John McIntire. It was produced and released by Universal Pictures. The film's sets were designed by the art director Edward L. Ilou.
The Prince is a 2014 American action thriller film directed by Brian A. Miller. It stars Jason Patric, Bruce Willis, John Cusack, and Rain. The film received a VOD and theatrical release by Lionsgate on August 22, 2014.
On November 23, 2012, Jordan Davis, a black American 17-year-old boy, was murdered at a Gate Petroleum gas station in Jacksonville, Florida, United States, by Michael David Dunn, a white 45-year-old software developer, following an argument over loud music played by Davis and his three friends, in what was believed to be a racially motivated shooting.
Double Jeopardy is a 1992 television thriller film directed by Lawrence Schiller and starring Rachel Ward and Bruce Boxleitner.
Gunslingers is a 1950 American western film written by Adele Buffington and directed by Wallace W. Fox. It stars Whip Wilson, Andy Clyde, and Reno Browne.
Michael Weir is a British double murderer and serial burglar who was the first person in English legal history to have been convicted of the same crime twice. In 1999, he was jailed for the murder of 78-year-old war veteran Leonard Harris. Weir's conviction was quashed a year later at the Court of Appeal on a technicality, only for him to be re-convicted in 2019 in a 'double jeopardy' case after new evidence was found. Weir was also convicted in 2019 of the murder of 83-year-old Rose Seferian, who was also killed during a burglary five weeks after Harris, which made additional history as the first time a second murder charge was added to a double jeopardy case. Upon Weir's conviction at the Old Bailey in December 2019, Justice Maura McGowan told the jury that they had made "legal history".
The murder of Jacqueline Montgomery, a 15-year-old girl from Islington, North London, United Kingdom, occurred on 1 June 1975. She was murdered by Dennis McGrory, her aunt's 28-year-old estranged partner, who was described at his trial as being "wild with rage" when he sexually assaulted, stabbed, and strangled Montgomery at her family home in Offord Road.