How would double jeopardy apply in the P. Diddy case?

Question

I had a question earlier today about double jeopardy, and the answer was surprising to me, it also raises a strange implication for the P. Diddy trial.

Basically, double jeopardy means you can't be tried twice for the same incident. So, if you're acquitted of murder, the prosecution can't try again with manslaughter. Even though manslaughter is a different crime from murder, it would presumably concern the same incident.

(Although in a case like that, the judge would probably instruct the jury that if they don't believe you're guilty of murder, they are allowed to consider lesser charges like manslaughter. But you get my point.)

So, Diddy was accused of the serial abuse of multiple women. You'd think that if he was acquitted, they'd easily be able to try him for a different incident of abuse or a different victim.

Except he wasn't charged over any specific incident or victim. He was charged with racketeering. It's a bit convoluted, but basically they were alleging that he couldn't have been a serial abuser on such a large scale without a large group of employees and hangers-on to help organise and cover up his crimes. That constitutes a criminal organization, and he was being charged with being the head of that criminal organization.

This has the advantage of charging him for all of his crimes all at once. It avoids the possibility that multiple allegations would mean he can't get a fair trial on any one allegations, which is why the Harvey Weinstein New York conviction was overturned.

But does it mean that double jeopardy applies to all the crimes? If they charged him with the rape or assault of any particular victim, would that be a bit like the murder/manslaughter problem, where it may be a different crime, but it's the same incident.

Has he basically just been acquitted of every sex crime he's ever committed (allegedly) since becoming a celebrity and having an entourage, even if currently unknown victims come forward?

Answer 1

Has he basically just been acquitted of every sex crime he's ever committed (allegedly) since becoming a celebrity and having an entourage, even if currently unknown victims come forward?

No.

In general

double jeopardy means you can't be tried twice for the same incident.

This is close, but not quite right.

You can't be tried twice for the same crime arising out of the same incident. So, if the new charge is a lesser included offense of the one for which you were acquitted, you can't be convicted of that crime again. But, if the new crime has different, non-overlapping elements from the already tried crime, double jeopardy does not apply.

Specifically:

The double jeopardy protection in criminal prosecutions bars only an identical prosecution for the same offence; however, a different offense may be charged on identical evidence at a second trial.

Put another way, unless an acquittal in the first trial makes it logically impossible that you committed the newly charged crime (i.e. unless it requires re-litigating against the same defense a fact necessarily found by the jury in a prior acquittal, even if the jury hung on other counts) double jeopardy does not preclude it.

Just because you are acquitted, for example, of drunk driving, doesn't mean that you can't be tried in a second trial with the new charge of vehicular homicide, which has elements that are distinct from the drunk driving charge.

As applied to RICO charges

RICO cases (i.e. those filed under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) are quite complicated. You must plead the existence of a corrupt organization (formally acknowledged or implied in fact), that has committed more than one specifically identified "predicate offenses" in specific incidents, of which the defendant is a member.

Further RICO charges would be barred unless the new organization did not substantially overlap with the old one, or the predicate offenses were unrelated to the predicate offenses previously identified.

But, in general, a RICO acquittal is not a complete bar to a trial for the underlying predicate offenses (and certainly not uncharged predicate offenses) if those predict offenses were not tried in the same trial. After all, the RICO acquittal could be because, for example, the jury found that the people charged were not members of the corrupt organization, and instead were acting independently of each other.

So, a RICO case which charges that victims A and B were harmed by predicate offenses, does not preclude trials for crimes against victims C and D by someone who happened to be part of the alleged corrupt organization who was tried for RICO in the first case.

The dual sovereign rule

In addition to the analysis above, federal acquittals do not bar charges in state court, and state court acquittals do not bar charges in federal court, even if the new charges are for a crime with the same elements arising from the same incident.