History Main / OffOnATechnicality

The AmoralAttorney with [[MyRuleFuIsStrongerThanYours Rule Fu Stronger Than Yours]] loves taking advantage of this. The justice system may counteract it by JusticeByOtherLegalMeans. The InsanityDefense is a version of this where the defendant (or their advocate) admits they did it but argues they aren't responsible for their actions because they were mentally incapable of determining right from wrong at the time.

The criminal is caught, comes up for a trial -- and then it turns out that he wasn't read his MirandaWarning, or the CowboyCop forgot to get a search warrant, or the confession was obtained via JackBauerInterrogationTechnique. The judge is forced to throw the case out and the (alleged) crook [[KarmaHoudini walks free to offend again]] while their victims are left to suffer the ruling of a legal system more concerned about "procedure" than "justice".

** This is pulled more straight in ''Trials and Tribulations'': [[spoiler: Ron [=DeLite=] is found innocent of the crimes of the notorious GentlemanThief [=Mask☆DeMasque=] despite him having ''confessed'' to being him... which was all part of the machinations of Luke Atmey, who took the fall for being [=DeMasque=] to get away with a murder he committed and framed Ron for. Once the truth is finally revealed, Ron can no longer be tried for ANY of [=Mask☆DeMasque's=] due to double jeopardy and gets away scot-free.]]

[[folder: Films -- Animated]]

** Sideshow Bob tries to pull this off when he kidnaps Bart with the intent to kill him at "five corners" (a fictional location where five states come together). His plan is to stand in one state, fire the gun in the second, the bullet travels through the third, hits Bart in the fourth and he falls and dies in the fifth. Bob thinks it would be impossible to convict him because no single act in any state would be illegal. This completely fails as he is arrested by the police of all five states. [[RuleOfFunny This is of course]] [[ItRunsOnNonSensoleum complete nonsense]]; he could be convicted of murder in ''any'' of those states or a federal court.

[[folder:Real Life]]
* One UK lawyer makes a very nice living getting the rich and famous off traffic tickets, speeding, drunk driving etc, exactly on this. The press started calling him "Mr. [[LoopholeAbuse Loophole]]". He ''[[AppropriatedAppellation trademarked it]]''.
* A great many cases the judges don't want to decide (that is, political cases) are dismissed when [[TakeAThirdOption the judges rule that the person bringing the case doesn't have standing to sue or that there was some sort of error in the procedure of the court or administrative agency below]]. This is especially true when the judges know that their decision would be hugely controversial (or alternatively, that they don't want to make the correct ruling because they like the status quo, even if it's wrong), but is especially common when, after reviewing the case and hearing oral arguments, the judges realize that they can't come to a majority decision on the merits, but that some technical ground exists that can avoid the embarrassment of a fractured or plurality decision.
** A particularly famous case of this is ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay_v._United_States Clay v. United States]]'', the case about UsefulNotes/MuhammadAli's refusal to submit to the draft.[[note]]Details: As Thurgood Marshall had been in the employ of the Department of Justice at the time the case was initiated, he recused himself, leaving the Court at an eight-man panel. After oral arguments, the vote was 5-3 against Ali, but after Justice Harlan -- who had been assigned to write the opinion -- had read up on Black Nationalist and Nation of Islam doctrine, he was convinced that Ali really was a conscientious objector. This changed the Court to 4-4, which presented a problem -- the Court ''hates'' 4-4 decisions, because they uphold the status quo without publishing an opinion, meaning Ali would go to jail and never even know why. Eventually, Justice Stewart found a technical issue in the procedure followed by the Draft Appeal Board, and a unanimous Court issued an opinion striking that procedure down.[[/note]]
** [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elk_Grove_Unified_School_District_v._Newdow That whole Supreme Court case]] about whether it violates the separation of church and state to have kids saying "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance at school [[AntiClimax ended very boringly]] when the Court ruled that since the father who filed the lawsuit didn't have custody of his kid, he couldn't claim to be protecting her First Amendment rights.
** The Scopes "[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scopes_Trial Monkey Trial]]", over the teaching of evolution in schools. Scopes's conviction was set aside on appeal: the Butler Act, forbidding the teaching of evolution, carried a mandatory fine of $100, which is what Scopes had been fined when convicted. However, Tennessee law of the time forbade judges from setting fines above $50, rendering the judgment invalid. It's been suggested that the judge knew this and did it intentionally, so the supreme court could overrule him on technical grounds, preserving the law from a constitutional challenge. Not to mention the entire trial was a fabrication to save the town of Dayton, Tennessee by putting it on the map, bringing tourist dollars in -- Scopes hadn't even violated the law, only going along with it for this purpose.
** This is what happened with [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollingsworth_v._Perry Hollingsworth v. Perry]], the case regarding California's Prop 8 (a ballot initiative prohibiting same-sex marriage). The Supreme Court kicked the case back to the lower court on the grounds that the plaintiff was not a party to the original case and therefore lacked the standing to appeal it (the original defendant, the state of California, had elected not to appeal after losing the initial case; a third party attempted to do so in its place), which meant that the original ruling would be upheld for the purposes of this specific case, but no precedent was set for the country at large.[[note]]The exact same Supreme Court panel did, however, rule on the underlying issue two years later in [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obergefell_v._Hodges Obergefell v. Hodges]].[[/note]]
** [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colorado_Civil_Rights_Commission Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission]] dealt with a bakery in Colorado refusing to design a custom wedding cake to a gay couple based on the owner's religious beliefs (although he was perfectly willing to sell them a cake off the shelf). The Colorado Civil Rights Commission originally found in favor of the couple, but the decision was later overturned by SCOTUS, who sidestepped the core Constitutional issue about whether a businessperson can refuse service to a group on religious grounds, in favor of ruling that the Commission had been unfairly biased against the baker. Failure to definitively settle the issue led to the baker being targeted and sued again by a transgender person asking for a gender-transition cake, which predictably [[HereWeGoAgain kicked off a whole new series of suits and counter-suits]].
** The 2019 US Census Supreme Court lawsuit. The SCOTUS sidestepped the larger question of whether the US Census form can include a question about whether the taker is a citizen, ruling instead that the Commerce Secretary didn't go though the proper channels to include the citizenship question on the census form in this particular case.
** In Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California, the SC ruled that the Trump administration couldn’t end the Obama-era DACA program (which allow people who were brought to the US as undocumented immigrants as children to stay pending renewal for two years at a time) because they hadn’t followed the proper guidelines under the Administrative Procedures Act in doing so. Essentially that the administration was "arbitrary and capricious" in making a rule that would upend 800,000 people’s lives. Although in the majority opinion, Justice Roberts wrote that they were not ruling on whether or not the program was unconstitutional in and of itself.
* If the US government has spied on you illegally and they classified the spying as secret, you can't sue. Because the fact that they spied on you is classified, you can't prove they spied on you. [[Catch22Dilemma If you could prove it, you could sue, but the evidence is secret, so you can't.]] Even if you can prove that the government illegally spied on you, the feds will try to have the entire case thrown out on "state secrecy" grounds. Even if some of the evidence you have isn't secret. In evidence involving government spying, they can legally conceal the "sources and methods." All thanks to the Espionage Act.
* Very often, technicalities (for example, improperly collected evidence or confessions) will result in a retrial with said data excluded, not a defendant "getting off scot-free". Ernesto Miranda himself was convicted on retrial, and went to prison (though he was paroled in only three years).
* OlderThanRadio: The 1714 Riot Act (read out to persuade a group of 12 or more delinquents to disperse, and yes, this is the source of the expression "reading someone the riot act") featured precise wording in what needed to be said, and multiple cases were thrown out because of the omission of "God Save The King".
* As an example of how people think this trope is TruthInTelevision, Creator/AndersonCooper reported a story about a young woman who robbed a bank, and then bragged about it on [=YouTube=]. She even flashed the money she'd stolen in front of the camera. The police found out about the video, and compared it to footage from the robbery, and noticed that she was wearing the same clothes in both. They promptly went to her house and arrested her. A reporter filmed the arrest from a safe distance. As she was being put in the squad car, the robber looked right at the camera and said "They didn't read me my rights," with a smile on her face showing that she thought she was about to get off scot-free. She probably sobered up quickly when her lawyer explained the situation to her.[[note]]In short: they "have to" before asking any questions (and if they don't, only the ''answers'' are guaranteed to be thrown out). Since they had ''visual'' evidence which could be argued as a confession, no police questions necessary, the trial would arguably be a slam dunk.[[/note]]
* An Australian man discovered that his bank would allow him to overdraft his bank account without any limit. He used this to pay off his mortgage and then spent the next few years living it up. By the time the problem was discovered, he had over-drafted his account by more than a million dollars. He was convicted of fraud and sent to jail. He represented himself at his appeal and argued that while his actions were immoral they were not actually illegal under Australian law. If he got the money by exploiting a computer glitch, it would be illegal but all his requests for money were actually approved by human bank officials. Fraud requires an element of deception but he never lied to anyone at the bank. Legally, all he did was ask the bank for a loan and the bank gave it to him no-questions-asked. The appeal courts agreed and overturned his conviction on the grounds that no crime was actually committed. He still owed the bank a ton of money but that was a civil matter. The bank seized all his assets but forgave the rest of the debt in order to avoid further bad publicity.
* In a non-criminal example, this is how supporters of 1912 US Olympic athlete Jim Thorpe got his medals from those Olympics reinstated after he was stripped of them for violating the rules at the time that required athletes to be amateurs. Rather than continue to argue the underlying violation, they pointed out ''another'' rule that required any protest of this type to be made within 30 days of the closing ceremony and provided evidence that the objections leading to Thorpe's disqualification had not been raised until after the 30-day window had already passed. It worked; Thorpe's medals were reinstated in 1983, 70 years after the initial disqualification.
* In the US State of Maryland, a man was involved in a very bad traffic accident. The news did not report if the man had been drinking, but since the State Trooper wrote him a ticket for reckless driving - a driving offense punishable by a fairly serious fine and points on his license - drunk driving was probably involved. At some point, probably a while after the accident, one of the victims died. The driver went to see a lawyer. The lawyer essentially told him to run, not walk, to the courthouse and pay the ticket before someone realized what was going on and cancelled it. So he paid the ticket, which is the equivalent of pleading guilty. Shortly thereafter he was charged with manslaughter, (either vehicular or involuntary, it didn't say) and was convicted. On appeal, the Maryland Court of Appeals (the state's highest court) found his paying the ticket was a conviction for reckless driving, making his subsequent trial for manslaughter a violation of double jeopardy, and set aside his conviction. ''His paying a fine saved him from jail time and a criminal conviction.'' To this day, many years later, police in Maryland never write a ticket for serious auto accidents with bodily injury or death until a prosecutor has a chance to review the case.
* As recounted in ''Ojibwa Warrior'', Dennis Banks and others of the American Indian Movement were involved in a standoff with federal forces at Wounded Knee over an attempt to secede from the United States. Afterwards, at his trial, the judge dismissed the charges related to fighting the US Army because the military is not allowed to participate in civilian law enforcement.[[note]]The rest of the case was dismissed separately for reasons that don't ''quite'' fit this trope.[[/note]]
* Charles J. Guiteau, the man who shot US President James Garfield, attempted to do this in order to evade a murder charge, arguing that even though he shot Garfield, he wasn't responsible for Garfield's death because Garfield's death resulted from medical malpractice in the treatment of his injuries rather than as a direct result of being shot (which is technically true -- many historians believe that Garfield would likely have survived with proper care -- but does not negate the fact that Guiteau set the chain of events in motion). The argument failed to persuade, and Guiteau was found guilty of murder and executed.
* Creator/BillCosby served nearly three years of a three-to-ten year sentence for sexual assault before having the conviction vacated due to a procedural screw-up. In 2005, District Attorney Bruce Castor declared in a press conference that there wasn't enough evidence to bring criminal charges against Cosby and used this to compel him to self-incriminate on the stand during a civil trial against him. The testimony he gave in that trial was later used to convict him in his criminal trial; the Pennsylvania Supreme Court held that the press release constituted a legally binding promise that had been used to screw Cosby out of due process and his 5th and 14th Amendment rights had been violated, and released him.
* There is a 50-square-mile (129.50-square-kilometer) area in Yellowstone National Park in which a person cannot be convicted of any major felony. This is because of a loophole in the Constitution: A person is entitled by a trial by jury, but due to federal laws regarding the park, it is impossible for there to be any valid jurors to start a trial for the crime.
[[/folder]]

** In Haaland v. Brackeen (2023), the court upheld the Indian Child Welfare Act which prioritizes keeping Native children up for adoption within Native communities. They found that such a program did not infringe on the rights of the states. However, they sidestepped the question of whether or not this would be considered racial discrimination. The court ruled that the white couples involved with the case who’d wanted to adopt Native children didn’t have standing on the issue.

** An interesting variant happens in the case of poor [[spoiler:Yanni Yogi]] in the first game. He really ''was'' innocent of murdering [[spoiler:Gregory Edgeworth]], but his defense attorney couldn't be bothered to make a solid case for it. Instead, [[spoiler:he had Yogi plead insanity from oxygen deprivation (insanity from sleep deprivation in [[Film/AceAttorney the movie]]) and only got him off on the technicality that Yogi wasn't in control of his actions at the time.]] This ends up completely ruining the life of [[spoiler:Yanni (the movie goes into great detail over how everyone remained convinced that he did it and harassed him for being a murderer until his wife was DrivenToSuicide) as well as the life of Misty Fey (who was [[FridgeLogic somehow]] believed to be a fraud for naming the wrong person, even though by the case's verdict, Yogi ''did'' commit the crime).]] For his part, Phoenix refuses to resort to such tactics to get his clients found innocent.