Yes. Although you can certainly file a wrongful death claim against someone found criminally culpable, a conviction is not necessary. Criminal law requires a finding of “guilty beyond a reasonable doubt” for a conviction, so the burden of proof is very high. Often a person is not found guilty in criminal court simply because the jury decided the evidence against them was not sufficient for a “guilty beyond a reasonable doubt” verdict. Contrary to popular belief, the jury is not tasked with deciding if a person is guilty or innocent, only if the defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. For this reason, there are also many situations where a prosecutor will decide not to pursue charges in the first place because they recognize that there isn’t enough evidence to prove it in court.
These situations can be extremely frustrating for the deceased person’s loved ones. You may want some measure of justice for your loved one’s death, only to find out you can’t get it through the criminal justice system. However, you may still be able to seek some consequences for the person or entity responsible through a wrongful death case. Here’s why:
A wrongful death case is a civil suit or tort. A defendant who loses a civil case will receive a judgment they have to pay in damages, but they will not go to prison.
In these cases, the jury only has to find that the defendant was more likely guilty than not, based on a “preponderance of evidence.”
This is a much lower burden of proof than in a criminal case. It simply means that the jury believes it’s more likely than not that the defendant caused the death. As a result, you may get a verdict in a civil case that would not have been possible in a criminal one.
An example of this is the wrongful death suit against football player and actor O. J. Simpson. Most people recall his heavily publicized trial for murder, which ended in 1995 with an acquittal. Not long after that, family members of the two murder victims sued Simpson in civil court and eventually won a $33.5 million dollar judgment against him. Simpson refused to pay it, and in subsequent years the amount grew to around $70 million. An attorney for Fred Goldman, whose son was one of the murder victims, seized some of Simpson’s assets, including proceeds from a video game and royalties on a book called If I Did It, a theoretical account of how someone might have committed the murders.