Talk:Judicial estoppel

Judicial Estoppel in argument over jurisdiction

Judicial Estoppel would not work in the case described earlier. First, the defense in a criminal prosecution is already allowed to present multiple contradictory stories to account for the facts. This is reasonable because an innocent person who has no actual knowledge of the crime should not be barred from presenting multiple theories about how the crime actually took place, as long as it is consistent about one thing... the defendant didn't do it. Judicial estoppel as described in the deleted paragraph could be used to prevent a defendant from changing their plea, and other various things. All of this is irrelevant, because the defense could have made a good-faith error in their argument that only federal jurisdiction applies, and thus argued for a correction of jurisdiction back to the state's jurisdiction. This detail doesn't prevent the prosecuting attorney(s) to argue for judicial estoppel, but the likelihood that the estoppel would be upheld in this instance is pretty low. The idea however is that jeopardy had attached in both cases and thus the defendant was set free. First rule of law, if you think you have the slam dunk, you don't. The state case would have been dismissed at one of three points, pre-trial, post-trial, or during the trial. In pre-trial no jeopardy had attached, and once jurisdiction passed back to the state, the state could begin their case anew. In post-trial, jeopardy had attached, but so had a verdict, and thus the state court would simply affirm their verdict, and proceed. After all, the defendant had his trial, and a verdict was already rendered, that the verdict had been set aside due to a lack of jurisdiction doesn't mean the verdict had just disappeared. If jurisdiction returns, then the verdict is valid again. The last one, during trial is the most complicated one, because jeopardy has attached, but no verdict has been made. However, a dismissal due to lack of subject-matter jurisdiction is not equivalent to an acquittal, in fact, it's explicitly a statement of "this court has no right to render a decision in any way." Thus, jeopardy is detached, because no decision has or even could have been made by that court. Thus, when jurisdiction returns, the prosecution is allowed to retry the case.

The concern of the defense over judicial estoppel would be negligible compared to the mountain of other legal issues presented. --Puellanivis (talk) 17:25, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

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