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Justice by Other Legal Means
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Sometimes the detectives/prosecutors have found out who the true culprit is, but there is simply not enough evidence to arrest/convict the perp. However, sometimes the heroes demonstrate there are other ways to make the guilty pay that do not involve going outside the law themselves. For instance: Justice by Insurance: In this case, the criminal has gotten a big payout from the insurance company related to the crime he actually caused. In this conclusion, while the justice system's hands are tied, the evidence presented is enough for the insurance company to take back their money saying that it was obviously claimed under criminal circumstances. Of course, the criminal could be stupid enough to sue, but that means his crime could be fully revealed and he is really sunk. Justice by Lawsuit: The prosecutor was not able to convict the criminal, but the evidence amassed could be given to the victim and/or his family as good enough grounds to sue the criminal for everything they have in civil court. This can happen if the standard of proof needed to convict someone in a criminal case is higher ("proven beyond reasonable doubt") than in civil court ("preponderance of evidence"). Justice by Loophole: Going through the normal court system would be guaranteed to be bogged down by red tape, but find an archaic or little known but otherwise still legal clause in order to wring some degree of retribution. This could be a law that promised a theft could be reimbursed through providing the victim with a cow and two sheep, and then enact red tape on the modern value of the cow and two sheep. Or it could be allowing a Duel to the Death to settle matters, all completely within the law. Justice By Vendetta: The criminal has covered his tracks well enough to avoid prosecution...but then he goes and pisses off someone else who knows where all the (literal or figurative) bodies are buried. They get back at the criminal by telling the authorities everything they know, possibly in exchange for an immunity deal or plea bargain. This time, the prosecution has more than enough evidence to nail him to the wall. Justice by Diplomatic Intervention: The criminal could skip the country or claim Diplomatic Impunity by his own nation, unaware that their government wants to haul him into their own courts and all they have to do is use the other country's court records to nail him to the wall. Alternately, his country's government might decide to revoke his diplomatic immunity or extradite him back to the protagonists' own country to be tried anyway. Justice for Another Crime: The criminal can't be indicted for one crime, but he or she can get nailed for another. Tax Evasion instead of murder, for example. This one is often Truth in Television- Al Capone, a famous Prohibition-era gangster, was finally convicted on tax evasion. May also be the discovery they had committed Felony Murder. If the convicted crime in question is disproportionately minor, it may overlap with Jaywalking Will Ruin Your Life or Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot. This is also why most court cases have a litany of charges so that the jury can deliberate over all of them at once rather than having a Not Guilty verdict for the most serious offense and have Jeopardy become attached. Alternately, the criminal has committed crimes in multiple jurisdictions and is caught in one of them. A criminal might be convicted and jailed for armed robbery in one jurisdiction without the authorities realizing they've unwittingly caught the serial killer who's been terrorizing another jurisdiction. Multiple Courts: Many countries prohibit or restrict double jeopardy, i.e. multiple trials for the same crime. However, common law permits cases where multiple jurisdictions have sovereignty—for example, a case that could be tried in the courts of multiple states or provinces, or both a state court and a national court, or both a civilian court and a military court—to be retried in other jurisdictions if the suspect is acquitted on the first attempt. (Some countries also permit retrial if new evidence is found, but strictly speaking that is Not an Example.) A Sister Trope to Tricked into Another Jurisdiction. Contrast with Framing the Guilty Party (where the suspect's guilt cannot be sufficiently proven and so the cops plant evidence to get a conviction) and Vigilante Execution (where a vigilante kills the suspect after he walks). Warning: These examples contain unhidden spoilers. |
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The State of Michigan was so horrified by Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck's murder of young widow Delphine Downing and her two-year-old daughter, Rainelle, that they declined to pursue any charges against them. Instead, they were extradited to New York, where they were wanted for another murder, because New York had the death penalty, while it had been abolished for over a century in Michigan. They were found guilty of murder in the first degree and sentenced to death in the electric chair even though it was arguably an impulsive action by Beck alone, unlike the murder of the Downings, which was complex and premeditated. Had Fernandez not pleaded guilty and somehow beaten the charge by blaming Beck, as his defense wanted, the State of New York was ready to extradite him to Spain, where his first murder took place and he could be sentenced to death by garrote. | |
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In Shaman's Tears, Joshua Brand is unable to arrest the Corrupt Corporate Executive for various crimes because the victims (genetically engineered lifeforms) are not technically human. So he instead arrests him for violating the Endangered Species Act after he realizes one of the genetically engineered constructs was created using the DNA of a black-footed ferret. | |
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In 1990, Joe Son, a former actor famous for a bit role in Austin Powers and a brief martial artist career, abducted and raped a Californian woman (who was given the pseudonym of "Victoria" in a 48 Hours episode) with an accomplice. The case went unsolved until 2008, when Son was required to give his DNA in an unrelated vandalism charge. The DNA was linked to Victoria's abduction, but California's stature of limitations for rape had expired by then. Thus Son was simply charged with torture by the prosecution, and he was given a 7 years to life sentence. His sentence escalated to 34 years to life when Son killed his cellmate a month after his conviction. | |
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Freefall: A man attempts to commit genocide just so that he could claim the victim's assets and he can't be charged with it because the victims, who were sapient robots, were not legally recognized as people at the time of the crime. He instead is convicted of attempting to enrich himself at his company's expense and the judge strips him of his money and forces him to get a bottom-level restaurant job. And that judge was being restrained. The other possible judge wanted to sentence him to a job working with extremely dangerous chemicals. | |
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Attempted in Freebie and the Bean. The protagonists can't nail Meyers for racketeering until their witness returns, so they arrest him for indecent exposure (he once unzipped his fly in a park to fix his truss). Not only does it not work, the D.A. chews them out for letting Meyers know the police are interested in him. | |
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In Low-Life, Nixon can't prove that Tyrone Appleby of Lo-Cal is guilty of brainwashing and murdering rich fatties to take all their money. She collars him for soliciting a prostitute (herself) instead. | |
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In Shining Song Starnova, Oda—an idol producer and Golden Calf Productions’ chairman of the board—is a paedophile who molests his preteen talents. Golden Calf’s acting CEO Kamijou can’t and won’t have him arrested for this, due to both a lack of evidence and the fact that publicly outing him as a paedophile would destroy the company. Instead, he gathers evidence to get Oda convicted of embezzlement and tax fraud. | |
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In the final issue of the C.O.P.S. Comic-Book Adaptation, the team went after Big Boss for an unpaid parking ticket, knowing that his gang would try to stop them—and racking up tons of charges they could pin on the previously untouchable Big Boss. | |
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Schlock Mercenary zig-zags the trope when the clone of a man who was executed for vehicular homicide and manually operating said vehicle under the influence (as in, he had to disable his vehicle's safety features, while ice-cold sober, so that it couldn't stop him from driving manually after he got drunk) is brought back to court so that the Toughs can cash in his bounty. The clone rightfully claims that, since his original has already been executed, he cannot be tried again for the same crime. The judge concedes his point... before pointing out that the original was sentenced to death on the two counts against him; since the clone was created after the original crime, he can still be legally executed. | |
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Dan Vs.: At the beginning of "Anger Management", Dan is on trial for breaking into NORAD and attempting to launch the entirety of America's nuclear arsenal at the U.S./Canadian border to get revenge on a family of squirrels. After everything is said and done, trespassing is the only offense Dan is officially charged with when he just as easily could have been charged with treason and/or the attempted extinction of the human race. Justified as the U.S. Government wants everyone to remain ignorant of how easily Dan got a hold of the nuclear launch codes, broke into NORAD, and almost started World War III. | |
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The Last Duel: The duel is fought because Jean de Carrouges can't hope for a fair trial against Le Gris; the feudal court system means their overlord Count Pierre, who's good friends with the latter, will be the judge. Carrouges has to appeal directly to the French king for a legal duel for any chance of success. | |
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In Yellowbeard, the narrator at the beginning, after giving a laundry list of the title character's atrocities, including tearing men's hearts out and swallowing them whole, says, "Often forcing men to eat their own lips, he was eventually caught and imprisoned — for tax evasion." | |
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Dungeons & Dragons 3.5e: In the supplement Fiendish Codex II: Tyrants of the Nine Hells, the devils will often do this to damned souls who successfully argue their cases. A damned soul can make a case if they use one or both of the following defenses: forced to sign a Deal with the Devil, or they did not receive the promised benefits from a Pact Certain. Now, it is entirely possible to win these cases... but it's also fairly likely that either some clause in the pact or the pactee's attempts to escape the pact have made their alignment Lawful Evil, in which case they're damned to Baator anyways. Devils find this sort of thing hilarious. | |
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In X-Men: Days of Future Past, Bolivar Trask never suffers legal reprisal for planning to commit genocide on his fellow human beings due to intense Fantastic Racism in the American legal system at the time. Instead, he goes to prison for trying to pitch his killer robots to the Communist governments after America turns him down. | |
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In Zootopia, Judy is frustrated to find that Nick's "pawpsicle hustle" stays within the letter of the law since he has a vendor's license and a cross-district commerce permit, and he said the used sticks were "red wood", with a space. However, when she later needs his help on a case, she finds he didn't report any income on his tax forms and is able to record him bragging about the income he makes from his hustles. This enables her to use a charge of tax evasion to pressure him into helping her. | |
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In the first story arc of Gargoyles, Xanatos nearly gets the Gargoyles killed several times over by hiring a mercenary squad to attack them, building a force of killer winged robots that level half of their castle, and manipulating them into breaking into a rival corporation's facilities. In the end, he gets sent to prison (for only six months, at that) for "Receiving Stolen Goods" after he's found with the technology that he had the Gargoyles steal. | |
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In the Christmas episode of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, Ace cannot prove Odora stole Santa Claus' reindeer (she intended to use the secret of their gravity-defying abilities on a cosmetic) but manages to get her arrested for illegally keeping a crocodile from an endangered breed, which she also intended to use as ingredient. | |
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Glass Onion: The culprit destroys the damning evidence against him for the murder of Andi and there's no evidence tying him to the murder of Duke, to Blanc's utter sorrow. But Blanc does give Helen the idea to destroy Bron's estate, including the Mona Lisa, showing the failure of his much-hyped product Klear. If the culprit doesn't face charges for that destruction, their reputation will be in the pits anyway. | |
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In Apollo Justice, there's an odd example of the Justice by Another Crime type: Apollo lacks the evidence to convict the culprit of the third case, but is able to prove an accomplice exists. Once it becomes clear to said accomplice that the only way to avoid the death penalty for their own crime is to confess immediately, they do so then and there. | |
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Mr. Mastermind makes his debut in the comic book version of Dynomutt, Dog Wonder by holding the city hostage over the $ 1.47 fine he had to pay for a 49-day overdue library book. When Blue Falcon and Dynomutt find his hideout, he blows it up so there won't be any proof to get him arrested for the crime. Unfortunately, for him, he's 49 years overdue with another library book and ends up being arrested for it. He's so ego-driven he considers it worse than being arrested for the main crime. | |
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This method was even inverted once in the case of Edgar Ray Killen, one of the ringleaders of the triple murder that inspired Mississippi Burning, who managed to avoid conviction at his Federal civil rights trial by one vote (with the lone holdout later admitting that she only voted not guilty because Killen was a preacher). Years later, he was indicted on state murder charges and sentenced to 60 years in prison (which, since he was in his eighties by this point, was functionally a Longer-Than-Life Sentence). | |
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Scooby-Doo: Many villains are often guilty of hunting for hidden treasures in abandoned areas wearing silly ghost costumes, which, all things considered, isn't really a crime so long as they're not actively disturbing/harming the public. Occasionally, the writers will correct for this by pointing out during The Summation that they may just be notorious criminals actively wanted in other locales, and are being taken in for something completely unrelated. | |
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The Untouchables presents a good (although hardly perfectly realistic) depiction of how Al Capone, a notorious crime boss, was well-known to be guilty of crimes up to and including murder, yet since no-one could stick it to him, he was arrested for tax evasion. | |
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The Firm: The conflict of the movie is newcomer lawyer Mitch McDeere being in the middle of a conundrum: he can either rat on the criminal activities of the Amoral Attorney firm he works for and every client that it is associated with (which includes The Mafia) and get disbarred and most probably have to go into Witness Protection and/or get killed (which is the option the FBI is trying to force him to take) or do nothing and risk jail time for criminal obstruction. Mitch successfully ensnares the firm by using lawyer-client privilege to reach an agreement with the Moralto mob while proving every legal partner was guilty of overbilling their clients (a federal offense that will send everybody who did it straight to jail without the standard circus), thus allowing him to keep his status as a lawyer. | |
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Had Season 4 of Transformers: Animated been greenlit, Word of God says that this would have been brought up. note In the unmade "Trial of Megatron" three-parter, it would have been discussed as a result of two factors, namely that the Decepticons as a whole had already been granted amnesty in exchange for going into exile after the war and that most of Megatron's actions during the series proper had occurred on Earth (outside of Cybertronian jurisdiction). In other words, this meant that the only crime he could be charged with was the assault on the Space Bridge repair ship at the beginning of the series. Sentinel Prime angrily compares the act to getting a parking ticket. | |
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Grid Legends: By the end of story mode, the racing commission is clearly sick of Ravenwest's on-track antics, specifically lead driver Nathan McKane frequently crashing his opponents and causing at least one massive on-track pileup that nearly cost another racer their career. While GRID is full-contact as racing goes, this was turning into a bad look, but the team's fame and team principal Ryan McKane's wealth mean the commission couldn't level sanctions that mattered without looking like they were either on a witch hunt or favoring other teams... until evidence of Nate's chronic cheating came to light. At that point the commission was so sick of Ravenwest that they completely ignored everything they had authority over and went for the alternate means: releasing evidence that the worst crash was planned, completely intentional, and deliberately targeted a specific rival; more than enough to get Ryan arrested in charges of criminal conspiracy and reckless endangerment, and leave Nate terrified once his protection and secrecy were stripped away. | |
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Happened a few times in Judge Dredd: At the end of The Pit, Dredd has no evidence to convict Fonzo Bongo of being the head of his sector's branch of the Frendz crime syndicate. What Dredd does have, thanks to an observant rookie, is several hundred unpaid parking tickets in Bongo's name, earning him a sentence of twenty-five years. In an old Daily Star newspaper strip, Dredd can't prove a crime boss sent a bomb to kill him, but he can get the guy for illegal parking. Since Dredd has no intention of towing the offending car, it will still be illegally parked when the boss gets out (after thirty days) and so the boss will essentially serve a life sentence for parking rather than attempted Judge killing. Once he hears this the crook promptly confesses on the grounds that if he were going away anyway he isn't doing life for parking offenses. In Block Judge, Dredd mercilessly exploits this trope to get known gang leaders out of the way until he can find more solid evidence on them. Even put together, removing mattress tags and failing to finish a prescription don't come up to much more than a few weeks, but it's all the time he needs. |
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In Tapeheads, the main characters get revenge on a Sleazy Politician by broadcasting a Home Porn Movie of him on live TV, which gets them arrested by the FBI. They're acquitted of the crime but go to jail anyway for outstanding traffic warrants. | |
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In the Biker Mice from Mars episode "My Cheese Is Quick", Lawrence Limburger gets away with framing Charley for his murder by fabricating the story that he wandered the city with amnesia after the accident. The Biker Mice manage to ensure his comeuppance anyway by informing the IRS that Limburger is still alive and still hasn't paid his taxes. | |
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In Justice Society of America, a confrontation with the Crimson Avenger reveals that Wildcat framed a man for killing his fiancé, but reveals that he only did that because he couldn't prove that the man had killed his brother, sister-in-law, and nephew after his brother killed the man's fiancé, although Wildcat insists that he just ensured the man's arrest and it was up to the courts if he were executed. | |
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This is how Walt of Gran Torino ultimately deals with the vicious gang that terrorized the Vang Lor family and raped Sue. After loudly berating them and enumerating their crimes for everyone in the community to hear, he tricks them into gunning him down in broad daylight, getting them all arrested for murder. | |
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Ace Attorney: Edgeworth does this unwittingly in Ace Attorney Investigations. He gets Ernest Amano arrested for helping Lance cover up a murder, to the great delight of Agent Lang. Lang had been previously unable to prove he was tied to a smuggling ring and now had a reason to take him in. Later on in Investigations Edgeworth attempts to prove that Quercus Alba is the Big Bad leading the smuggling ring. Alba confesses to killing a man that infiltrated his embassy, but this means Alba will be tried in the courts of his home country. This forces to Edgeworth quickly investigate the possibility that another murder happened on neutral soil, and if Alba killed the other victim, Alba can be tried locally. Of course, Alba still needs his diplomatic immunity revoked first. In the sequel to Investigations Edgeworth can't have the Big Bad Simon Keyes arrested for his connection to the other murders due to the fact Keyes didn't directly order the murders, only engineered events to make them happen. He does get Keyes eventually when it turns out Keyes personally killed the body double who had been masquerading as Zheng Fa's president for the past twelve years. In the first game's fourth case, Phoenix was unable to prove that Manfred von Karma was the mastermind of a plot to murder Robert Hammond and frame Edgeworth for it. However, everything turns out to be connected to the DL-6 incident, an unsolved case in which Edgeworth's father was murdered... by Von Karma. The best part about this is that Von Karma intended for the DL-6 incident to be reopened as a backup plan to get Edgeworth convicted if he were exonerated of Hammond's murder. In the first game's bonus fifth case, Corrupt Cop Damon Gant subverts this, forging evidence to get serial killer Joe Darke convicted for a murder he himself committed. Gant also sets up the situation to make prosecutor Lana Skye think her sister did it, effectively putting her under his thumb for years with the threat of releasing a key bit of evidence that would implicate Ema. In Apollo Justice, there's an odd example of the Justice by Another Crime type: Apollo lacks the evidence to convict the culprit of the third case, but is able to prove an accomplice exists. Once it becomes clear to said accomplice that the only way to avoid the death penalty for their own crime is to confess immediately, they do so then and there. |
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In a filler episode of Dragon Ball Z, Gohan successfully rescues a baby dinosaur from an evil circus owner who had abducted and was abusing it. As he flies away, the circus owner points out that he knows where the dinosaur's nest is: there's nothing stopping him from going back and stealing the dino again. The police further admit that capturing a baby animal for use in the circus is entirely legal...but the circus owner had, during the fight, taken a police officer's gun in an attempt to shoot the dino's angry parents. And taking an officer's handgun is a criminal offense. | |
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Batman with Robin the Boy Wonder: In one episode, the Joker and his thugs, disguised as a filming crew, were looking for a treasure. It was later revealed the only treasure was a fake. The Joker thought he'd get off because he couldn't be convicted for looking for a false treasure he never found. He was then told he could be nailed for making a film without proper authorization. | |
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