Double jeopardy
Post-2003

Following the murder of Stephen Lawrence, the Macpherson Report recommended that the double jeopardy rule should be abrogated in murder cases, and that it should be possible to subject an acquitted murder suspect to a second trial if "fresh and viable" new evidence later came to light. The Law Commission later added its support to this in its report "Double Jeopardy and Prosecution Appeals" (2001). A parallel report into the criminal justice system by Lord Justice Auld, a past Senior Presiding Judge for England and Wales, had also commenced in 1999 and was published as the Auld Report six months after the Law Commission report. It opined that the Law Commission had been unduly cautious by limiting the scope to murder and that "the exceptions should extend to other grave offences punishable with life and/or long terms of imprisonment as Parliament might specify." 1999 was also the year of a highly publicised case in which a man, David Smith, was convicted of the murder of a prostitute after having been acquitted of the "almost identical" murder of sex worker Sarah Crump six years previously. Because of the double jeopardy laws that existed at the time, Smith could not be re-tried for Crump's murder, despite police insisting they were not looking for anybody else and that the case was closed.
punctuation:no_comma, startend:end_checker