The concept of double jeopardy is a crucial part of the US constitution. The Double Jeopardy clause, stated in the Fifth Amendment, was designed to protect the criminals from prosecution for the same offense twice (Little, 2019). According to the legislation, no individual can be charged for the committed crime if a trial has already been conducted. The doctrine was included in the US Constitution to limit the power of the legal institutions and demonstrate the justice of governmental decisions, upholding the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment (Little, 2019). However, some exceptions to the double jeopardy regulation are still present, namely the cases of Rodney King, where four suspects were tried twice for the same offense.
During the first trial, the beating of an African-American man, Rodney King, was investigated in the Los Angeles County District Court, with four police officers charged with assault and use of excessive force. Although videotape evidence was presented, the offenders were acquitted, causing public outrage in the form of the Los Angeles riots (Kappeler & Schaefer, 2018). A number of police and law representatives considered the verdict unjust according to the relevant US laws, necessitating a change in the decision. Therefore, in avoidance of the double jeopardy clause, the officers were prosecuted for the violations regarding Rodney King’s civil rights in the second case.
Given that the suspects were charged with similar crimes based on the same incident, it is possible to argue that the double jeopardy regulation was violated. Although the charges introduced for the second trial included different legal grounds, the same event and evidence were used for the prosecution process, meaning that the officers encountered two separate legal proceedings for one crime (Kappeler & Schaefer, 2018). Therefore, the double jeopardy clause of the Fifth Amendment was transgressed.
References
Kappeler, V. E., & Schaefer, B. P. (2018). The police and society: Touchstone readings, fourth edition. Waveland Press.
Little R.K. (2020) Gamble v. U.S. on double jeopardy. In D. Klein & M. Marietta (Eds.), SCOTUS 2019 (pp. 49-58). Macmillan.