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Law Blog Criminal-Law Brain Teaser of the Day

By Nathan Koppel

A long-ago crime in Los Angeles has given rise to a novel, dare we say fascinating, criminal-law question: Can a defendant be prosecuted a second time for a crime after he has already pleaded guilty and served time for the crime?

Here's the deal. In 1994, Frank Antoine Lewis, then 14, walked up to a parked car in West Hollywood and shot the driver, Lisa La Pierre.

La Pierre lived, but the gunshot paralyzed her from the neck down. She dropped out of USC and spent the next 15 years on a ventilator and wheelchair, before passing away in January. Here's a Los
Angeles Times article about the case.

Lewis pleaded guilty to attempted murder and served several years in a juvenile jail for the crime. But the question is whether he can now be prosecuted for murder if the Los Angeles County coroner's office determines that the shooting was in fact the cause of La Pierre's death?

It's a tricky question that turns first, of course, on what the coroner rules was the official cause of death.

Stanford law prof Robert Weisberg told the Times that prosecutors would have a hard time proving the shooting caused La Pierre's death since she lived for 15 years after the shooting. "Causation would be incredibly mushy," he said.

Here's another tricky issue: Lewis, who is now 30, was a juvenile at the time of the crime, which could make it hard for prosecutors to now go after him as an adult, Weisberg said.

Still, Weisberg said, there is no double-jeopardy bar to a second prosecution, because at the time of the first prosecution the government could not have charged Lewis with murder, since La Pierre had not yet died.

"If the prosecution wants to go forward with this they can," he said.

The L.A. County DA's office declined to say whether it planned to prosecute Lewis again, should the coroner conclude that La Pierre's death was a homicide.

Readers, please ponder the issue over the weekend and file briefs with us on Monday, no later than 9:00 a.m., sharp.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 26, 2010 (boomark / email).