Under current Australian law, double jeopardy is a rule that allows for a second trial to be held if there is new compelling evidence available that wasn't available in the past, and lets the prosecution have another chance at pursuing the offender, note in order to be tried twice the accused must have committed a serious criminal offence like murder or manslaughter.
The major benefit of double jeopardy is that it stops people from being put on trial again and again for the same crime. This means that the accused does not have to go through the strain and stress of trial after trial after a verdict has already been reached. It also means that the prosecution cannot continually try to convict somebody of a crime.
However Double Jeopardy has caused tremendous problems in a number of cases, where there has been plenty of evidence against a person, but not quite enough to convict them. In several cases people have been acquitted of murder just because some evidence was not strong enough to persuade the jury and only to find that twenty years later new forensic technology has led to incriminating evidence against them, yet they cannot be tried and are allowed to resume their daily life. Specific cases, such as the Lawrence case, where this has happened has lead to successful calls to modify the double jeopardy laws to allow a person to be tried again if new compelling evidence is discovered.…show more content… This put many families through years of trauma and pain, they had to live their lives knowing that the justice system had failed them and they were helpless against it. The lawrence case sparked controversy across the globe and cost a total of £30 million dollars, and is one of the major reasons why the laws have