§ 303.2 Double jeopardy

If a young person goes through a juvenile delinquency case in Family Court, the same "double jeopardy" protections used in adult criminal court also apply to them. Double jeopardy means a person cannot be tried twice for the same crime. Once a case is truly finished, the state cannot bring the same charge again.

This rule borrows the double jeopardy rules from New York's criminal law (Article 40 of the Criminal Procedure Law) and applies them to kids in Family Court. So if a judge or jury already decided a case, or if a trial started and reached a certain point, the same charges usually cannot be brought again against that young person.

This protects kids from being put through the same case more than once. It gives them the same basic fairness that adults get in criminal court, even though juvenile cases are handled differently in many other ways.