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Comment by jasonjei | Hacker News Reader

Considering that he's been sentenced and assuming he has served the term of probation, if he were to set foot on the US, could he be tried and sentenced again, or does Double Jeopardy protect him even if he already had proceeded through the German court system?

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Double Jeopardy doesn't protect you from being tried in multiple jurisdictions.

An American example is the "D.C. Snipper" who was charged in Maryland, Virginia, and D.C. to maximize jailtime and possibility of conviction.

Was that all for a single crime, or did each trial cover separate instances?

They were treated as seperate instances since the crimes were committed against people in X jurisdiction. That's applicable in this case as well since the Valve folk are in the US jurisdiction.

If the instances were partitioned between those three jurisdictions, then it isn't really an example of avoiding double jeopardy limitations by changing jurisdiction.

Right, I guess what I'm getting at is that neither case (the one in the article and the one I mentioned) was about Double Jeopardy because the police could partition the crimes to different jurisdictions.

Legalistically, its correct but ethically it means that police can try you multiple times so long as they narrow the jurisdiction on the first attempts. For instance, a car chase that crosses multi-jurisdictions can result in multiple trials (and consecutive sentences) even though its really just one offense.

Any idea what the statute of limitation would be for his crime in the US?

IANAL, but at first glance it would be 5 years federal, 6 years for Washington state. In practice they probably wouldn't let him into the US.

It does prevent multiple convictions if the crime only happened in one jurisdiction.

However, since in this case the defendant wasn't tried in the United States but in Germany it would all depend on criminal offense treaties between the two countries, not just US law.

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