double jeopardy

Director: bruce beresford

Actor: ashley judd,tommy lee jones,bruce greenwood,benjamin weir

Data Published: Fri Sep 24 1999

Genres: Crime,Drama,Mystery,Thriller

Key Words: wrongful arrest,wrongful conviction,blood,sex scene,woman on top

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0150377/

WIKI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Jeopardy_(1999_film)

Description: Double Jeopardy is a movie starring Ashley Judd, Tommy Lee Jones, and Bruce Greenwood. A woman framed for her husband's murder suspects he is still alive; as she has already been tried for the crime, she can't be re-prosecuted if...

Plot: Libby Parsons (Ashley Judd) and her husband Nick (Bruce Greenwood) are wealthy residents of Whidbey Island, Washington. With her best friend, Angela Green (Annabeth Gish) offering to look after her 4-year-old son, Matty (Benjamin Weir), Libby and Nick go off sailing for the weekend on their yacht. After a session of love making, Libby falls asleep. She wakes to find her husband missing and blood all over her hands, clothes, legs, and the boat's floors. A Coast Guard vessel appears and Libby is spotted holding a bloody knife she found lying on the deck. Even with Nick's body unaccounted for, Libby is arrested, humiliated in the media, tried, and convicted of her husband's murder. Libby asks Angela to look after Matty for the duration of her prison sentence. At first, Angela brings Matty to see Libby in prison, but after a while, these visits cease. On a phone call with Matty from prison, Libby hears a door open in the background, then Matty exclaims, "Daddy!" right before the line goes dead. Libby realizes that Nick possibly faked his death and framed her, leaving Matty as the sole beneficiary of his life insurance policy, as people convicted for murder are not allowed to collect the life insurance on their victims. After unsuccessfully attempting to get investigative help, she is told by a fellow inmate named Margaret (Roma Maffia) that if she were to get paroled for good behavior, she could kill Nick with impunity due to the Double Jeopardy Clause in the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Libby is paroled after six years and begins searching for Nick and Matty, while living in a halfway house under the supervision of parole officer Travis Lehman (Tommy Lee Jones). Lehman is a former law professor whose wife and daughter left him after the family was in a car accident with him at the wheel. Libby violates her curfew and is caught breaking into Matty's school on Whidbey Island to try to get Angela's records. However, as Lehman is delivering Libby back to prison via a car ferry, Libby drives Lehman's car overboard, which forces him to uncuff her. Libby then knocks out Lehman and swims to shore while he is rescued by ferry personnel. Libby discovers that Angela has recently died in Colorado in a gas explosion, which looks like an accident staged by Nick. Then Libby recognizes a Kandinsky painting in a newspaper photo. Tracing it through an art dealer's database (which nearly again allows her capture by Lehman) leads her to New Orleans, where she finds Nick running a luxury hotel under an assumed name, Jonathan Devereaux. Libby confronts Nick after making a winning bid of $10,000 on him at a bachelor's auction during a party hosted at his hotel. She demands he return Matty in exchange for her silence about his real identity, while he claimed that he faked his death to collect insurance as his original business was going under. Their parley is cut short when Lehman shows up at the hotel party to warn Nick that his wife is a fugitive. In the French Quarter, Libby is later tipped off by a bartender who recognizes her from a wanted poster but lets her escape the police as no reward is offered. Nick agrees to bring Matty to a meeting in a cemetery. There he uses a decoy boy to distract Libby, knocks her unconscious, and locks her in a casket inside a mausoleum. Using a .38 caliber handgun she had snatched from Lehman, Libby manages to shoot the hinges off the lid of the casket and escape the mausoleum by throwing a flower vase through a stained glass window. While tracking Libby in New Orleans, Lehman himself becomes suspicious of Nick's death and begins to believe Libby's story, based on the clues uncovered in his search. He finds a picture of a different Nicholas Parsons when searching the Washington State DMV records to prove his suspicions, and later confirms them when he uncovers six DMV records under that name, including Nick's DMV application and photograph. After intercepting and capturing Libby later in the city as she makes her way to Nick's hotel, the two end teaming up. Lehman visits Nick in his office under the pretense of asking for money to keep his identity secret. He records a remark by Nick that he had murdered his wife, the only witness to his true past, and then Libby enters, holding Nick at gunpoint. Nick is given a choice of surrendering to the authorities or getting shot by his vengeful wife, who he believes would go free for this deed because of double jeopardy. Nick pulls out a hidden gun, shoots Lehman, and fires away at Libby. Lehman manages to bring Nick down before he can shoot Libby. Nick gets the upper hand in the scuffle, but before he can kill the wounded parole officer, Libby shoots Nick dead. Lehman promises to help Libby get fully pardoned, and together they travel to Matty's boarding school in Georgia. Matty (Spencer Treat Clark), now eleven years old, recognizes his mother, and they embrace with Lehman watching them.