# Double Jeopardy (1999 film)

Double Jeopardy is a 1999 American crime adventure drama thriller film directed by Bruce Beresford, and starring Ashley Judd, Tommy Lee Jones, and Bruce Greenwood. Released on September 24, the film received mixed reviews from critics and grossed $177 million.

## Plot

Libby and Nick Parsons are wealthy residents of Whidbey Island, Washington. Libby's friend Angela watches their four-year-old son, Matty, so they can spend a romantic weekend sailing. Libby awakens after a night of lovemaking below the boat's deck to find blood everywhere and Nick missing. The Coast Guard arrive, after receiving a call from Nick who claims to have been stabbed, and finds Libby on the boat holding a bloody knife.
Although Nick's body is not found, Libby is convicted of murder. Her motive is assumed to be a $2 million life insurance policy and her alleged knowledge that Nick was under investigation for embezzlement. Libby asks Angela to adopt Matty and care for him while she is in prison. When Angela unexpectedly stops bringing Matty to prison to visit Libby, Libby tracks Angela to San Francisco (all via the prison's pay phone) and calls her. During their conversation, Nick enters Angela's apartment and Matty calls out, "Daddy!"; Libby immediately realizes that Nick is alive and had faked his death.
After Libby tries and fails to have Nick's insurer look into his death, Margaret, a fellow inmate and former lawyer, advises her to get paroled by good behavior and by falsely claiming remorse to the parole board for "killing" Nick. Once free, Margaret tells her, Libby can kill Nick with impunity due to the Double Jeopardy Clause in the US Constitution, meaning that she cannot be convicted of the same murder twice.
After six years in prison, Libby is paroled to a halfway house under the supervision of parole officer Travis Lehman, a former law professor whose wife and daughter left him due to his alcoholism. To search for Nick, Libby violates curfew and is caught breaking into Matty's old school on Whidbey Island to get Angela's records, as Angela had been an administrator there. As Lehman is taking Libby back to prison, she drives his car off a ferry in Puget Sound, grabs his gun, and swims to shore. She then goes to her mother, who gives her cash and a pickup truck.
Libby obtains Angela's new address in Colorado but learns from a neighbor that Angela died three years earlier in a explosion caused by a natural gas leak. An archived newspaper photo of Angela at a gallery reveals a painting by Wassily Kandinsky that previously hung in Nick's home. Libby traces him to New Orleans. Lehman almost catches her at the gallery, but she escapes. In New Orleans, she finds Nick running a small luxury hotel under the alias "Jonathan Devereaux".
Libby confronts Nick during a fund-raising auction at his hotel and demands he return Matty in exchange for her leaving him for good. Nick claims to her that he faked his death to avoid prison and to provide her and Matty with the insurance money, not believing she would be convicted, and says that Angela's death was accidental. Libby scoffs at his apparent lies. During their conversation, Lehman arrives at the hotel, and Libby slips out. Lehman informs "Jonathan" that Libby believes he is her supposedly dead ex-husband and informs the local police that she is in the area.
Libby arranges to meet Nick at Lafayette Cemetery to get Matty. Nick has a local boy lure her into one of the mausoleums, where he attacks her and tries to bury her alive. She frees herself, but he manages to escape. Meanwhile, Lehman is in "Jonathan's" office and notices the Kandinsky artwork Libby was searching for in the gallery. Now unsure of Libby's guilt, Lehman contacts his boss and asks him to fax over a photocopy of Nicholas Parsons' driver's license.
Lehman intercepts Libby and she breaks down sobbing. He goes to Nick's hotel and reveals to Nick that he knows Nick's true identity. After Lehman agrees to take a $1 million bribe for his silence but expresses concern that Libby could blow their deal, Nick states that Libby would not be a concern, joking that he has "buried" that problem. Libby then enters the room with Lehman's gun and both she and Lehman tell Nick that she can kill him with impunity due to the double jeopardy law. After Nick says where Matty is — at a boarding school in Georgia — Lehman reveals he had recorded Nick's confession to burying Libby and plays it back to Nick. Nick pulls a gun, quickly shooting and wounding Lehman. In the ensuing struggle, Nick is about to shoot Lehman again, but Libby kills him. Lehman insists they return to Washington to win her pardon. They later find Matty at the boarding school, where he immediately recognizes his mother, and they embrace.

## Cast

* Ashley Judd as Libby Parsons
* Tommy Lee Jones as Travis Lehman
* Bruce Greenwood as Nick Parsons / Simon Ryder / Jonathan Devereaux
* Annabeth Gish as Angie Green
* Roma Maffia as Margaret Skolowski
* Jay Brazeau as Bobby Long
* Michael Gaston as Cutter
* Dave Hager as Jim Mangold
* Davenia McFadden as Evelyn Lake
* Betsy Brantley as the prosecutor
* Spencer Treat Clark as Matty Parsons - Age 11

## Production

After Michelle Pfeiffer, Meg Ryan and Brooke Shields all declined the role, Jodie Foster was attached to star in the film as Libby Parsons and Bruce Beresford met with her several times about the script:
   She said to me once, when we were having... not an argument, we had different points of view over something, and she said, "We'll have to do it my way, I'm afraid." And I said, "Why, Jodie?" And she said, 'Because I'm so intelligent. I'm such an intelligent person that there is no point in disagreeing with me because I'm always right." I thought she was joking, but she wasn't! [laughs] She had this extraordinary opinion of her own IQ.
Double Jeopardy was filmed from Jul 15, 1998 to Oct 21, 1998.

## Reception

On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds an approval rating of 28% based on 87 reviews and an average rating of 4.5/10. The site's critics consensus reads: "A talented cast fails to save this unremarkable thriller." On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 40 out of 100 based on 30 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.
Roger Ebert gave the film two and a half stars out of four, and said "This movie was made primarily in the hopes that it would gross millions and millions of dollars, which probably explains most of the things that are wrong with it." Leonard Maltin gave the film 3 out of 4 stars, calling it "slick entertainment". Mick LaSalle from the San Francisco Chronicle wrote that the film is a "well-acted diversion, directed by Bruce Beresford (Driving Miss Daisy) with an intelligent grasp of the moment-to-moment emotion". For her performance in the film Ashley Judd won Favorite Actress at the 6th Blockbuster Entertainment Awards.

### Accolades

| Award | Category | Subject | Result |
| MTV Movie Award | Best Female Performance | Ashley Judd | Nominated |
| Blockbuster Entertainment Awards | Favorite Actress – Suspense | Ashley Judd | Won |
| Blockbuster Entertainment Awards | Favorite Actor – Suspense | Tommy Lee Jones | Nominated |
| Blockbuster Entertainment Awards | Favorite Supporting Actor – Suspense | Bruce Greenwood | Nominated |

### Box office

The film spent three weeks as the No. 1 film. It grossed $116 million in the US and $61 million overseas.

## Misinterpretation of the concept of double jeopardy

The film incorrectly implies that the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment gives someone a free pass to commit a subsequent crime if they are wrongfully convicted. The newspaper column The Straight Dope observed, "a crime, for double jeopardy purposes, consists of a specific set of facts. Change the facts and you've got a new crime ... no one would believe that a person convicted of beating Richard Roe to a pulp on December 8th could avoid another conviction for tracking down poor Rich in February and whaling on him again." Further, as murder is a state crime, and Washington and Louisiana are separate sovereigns, Libby's prosecution for Nick's murder in the latter state would in no sense be precluded given her previous conviction (although it would seem, naturally, to preempt a retrial for the murder committed in the former).