November 10th, 2005 at 4:42 pm
Reuters reports that Britain will retry a person for the same crime. Billy Dunlop confessed in 2000 to murdering a pizza delivery girl in 1991. Dunlop had been previously acquitted of the crime. The BBC article states that double jeopardy in Britain had been banned for over 800 years.
Retrial for “serious offences” was established in Part 10 of the Criminal Justice Bill of 2003. The crimes that can be retried are listed in Schedule 4 of the bill. I can’t find a statute of limitations. The BBC article states crimes may be retried but once, but I can’t find that in the law either.
O.J. Simpson may have been found not guilty in a criminal court, but he still got nailed for a wrongful death civil suit. There are still consequences even when one is not convicted in criminal court.
Thankfully one Justice who would rely on foreign law retired. We still have another in the person of Justice Breyer, and it’s not a stretch to say others would use foreign law when convenient.
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