History Main / LetOffByTheDetective

* ''Manga/KaitouSaintTail'' has SympatheticInspectorAntagonist Asuka Jr. consider Saint Tail to be his WorthyOpponent from the get-go, and he's even willing to set up a private conversation to negotiate with her and make sure [[TheOnlyOneAllowedToDefeatYou he gets the exclusive right to catch her]] for the sake of satisfying his pride... or at least that's how it starts, but things get complicated when he starts suspecting Saint Tail to actually be Meimi, his classmate whom he's been falling in love with lately. On top of that, he finds himself starting to actually agree with her work as a [[JustLikeRobinHood vigilante hero]] and can't even bring himself to arrest her anymore. All this does is make him more insistent that [[ControlFreak nobody is allowed to get to the bottom of this before he does]], and he pulls an EnemyMine with her at one point and even quietly ''enables'' one of her thefts during another to ensure this. On the flip side, Meimi/Saint Tail actually has no idea any of this is happening and still assumes he must be really passionate about (or perhaps even [[LovesMyAlterEgo romantically interested]] in) his WorthyOpponent. [[spoiler:At the end of the series, she's ready for him to despise and condemn him for learning her identity, but he instead "arrests" her [[MetaphoricallyTrue purely symbolically]], helps [[SecretKeeper keep her secret to the world]] while she retires, and even openly speaks of her as someone who protected the city.]]

** At the end of ''Literature/TheMirrorCrackdFromSideToSide'', Literature/MissMarple suspects that the story's main murderer, [[spoiler:Marina Gregg, was poisoned by her husband as a MercyKill to save her from further suffering and from the disgrace of public prosecution. After briefly hinting at this suspicion to him (and his response implying that she is correct), Miss Marple says no more.]]

* In the ''Series/{{FoylesWar}} episode "Among the Few" Detective Foyle lets off an RAF fighter pilot to fly one last mission instead of arresting him immediately for homicide because the arrest would make public his homosexuality and shame him. Implicitly the pilot promises that he will not come back alive from the mission, and he does not.

* Creator/RaymondChandler does this several times with Literature/PhillipMarlowe.

** In ''The High Window'', Phillip Marlowe once more demonstrates this quality by refusing to turn over any information about [[spoiler: the Murdocks despite the fact that Leslie and his mother are both murderers.]]

* Creator/RaymondChandler does this several times with Literature/PhillipMarlow.

-->'''Calvin:''' ''[as Tracer Bullet]'' I had figured out who trashed the dame's living room, but since she wasn't my client anymore, I felt no need to divulge the information. Besides, the culprit happened to be a buddy of mine. I closed the case.\\
'''Hobbes:''' ''[holding a football]'' I guess we should've played outside, huh?

* Subverted in ''ComicBook/SpiderMan''. In TheNineties, Spider-Man repeatedly ran into an elderly [[ClassyCatBurglar cat burglar]] called the Black Fox, who kept feeding Spidey sob stories about how he was just a pitiful, lonely old man who was about to retire from crime anyway, etc., etc. This would inspire Peter's sympathy, and if he didn't let the Fox go right away, his story would at least distract Spidey long enough for the Fox to slip away. Inevitably, Peter would realize a moment later that he'd let the old coot fast talk him ''again'' and be furious at himself. It was a RunningGag.

* On ''Series/{{Haven}},'' this trope usually occurs due to FanatasticLegalWeirdness. But the trope is played straight in season 4, when Dwight declines to arrest Duke for killing [[spoiler: his own brother, Wade]], because he felt that it was for the great good, as he had JumpedOffTheSlipperySlope and would have hurt more people had Duke not stopped him.

* In the ''Series/{{Life}}'' episode "Black Friday", the [[AssholeVictim decedent]] is found to have [[TheFagin coercively recruited several runaways into a criminal enterprise]] and pressured the female member of the group into sex at a very young age. The person who killed him is a homeless teenager protecting his young sister. Detective Crews tells the killer to claim that the dead guy accidentally fell. It works.

** In ''Literature/DeathOnTheNile'' Poirot [[spoiler: discovers that Tim Allerton is a jewel thief and manages to get a confession about him, but lets him go, so long as he returns his latest stolen item. Allerton's apology and LastMinuteHookUp with Cornelia Robson convinces Poirot that he won't steal again]].

** In ''Literature/DeathOnTheNile'' Poirot [[spoiler: discovers that Tim Allerton is a jewel thief and manages to get a confession about him, but lets him go, so long as he returns his latest stolen item. Allerton's apology LastMinuteHookUp with Cornelia Robson convinces Poirot that he won't steal again]].

* In the ''Radio/SherlockHolmes'' radio drama "The Singular Inheritance of Miss Gloria Wilson", Holmes chooses to keep silent when he realizes that a repentant and long-retired thief is about to escape police custody.

* Averted in an episode of ''Anime/CowboyBebop'', where Jet stops off to see his ex, Alissa. Before leaving, he learns that Alissa's current boyfriend, Rhint, has a bounty on him for [[SympatheticMurderer killing a loan shark in self-defense]]. When Alissa and Rhint try to flee, Jet stops his partner Spike from going after the two of them, and Spike asks if Jet is actually going to capture the pair or let them get away. Jet ''does'' take them down, explaining to the two of them that if he let them go, someone else who might hurt them far worse in the course of collecting the bounty might be after them tomorrow, and by then Alissa will officially be an accomplice and wanted as well. Instead he encourages Rhint to face the charges and get it over with properly, later telling Alissa that Rhint has a good chance of being able to successfully plead self-defense at trial.
* Occurs in an episode of ''Anime/HanaNoKoLunlun'' (in a ShoutOut to the O. Henry story mentioned below). More exactly, [[spoiler:an expert lockpicker and PunchClockVillain shows up to open an airtight vault and free Lunlun, nevermind that the InspectorJavert in charge of the investigation is aloso working on ''his'' case. When he's done, the inspector lets him go - though in this particular case it's justified in that the StatuteOfLimitations had just expired, so if the inspector tried to capture the lockpicker he ''would'' have to let him go anyway.]]

* In ''Manga/MoriartyThePatriot'', Sherlock actually does this a couple of times for William, as he has no actual interest in arresting him at all. In ''The Phantom of Whitechapel'' he even lies about The Lord of Crime's involvement in the case to hide it.

-->'''Calvin:''' ''[as Tracer Bullet]'' I had figured out who trashed the dame's living room, but since she wasn't my client any more, I felt no need to divulge the information. Besides, the culprit happened to be a buddy of mine. I closed the case.\\

* During the gunfight at the climax of ''Film/TwoDaysInTheValley'' a detective's life is saved by a semi-retired hitman. After the shootout the hitman starts to gather up the money from his [[OneLastJob Last Job]] but hesitates when he sees the cop watching him. The cop thinks about it for a minute, then signals the hitman to take his money and go before more police arrive.

* In vigilante movie ''Film/TheBraveOne'', the detective lets the female vigilante escape, apparently just out of personal sympathy.

** Though he didn't let Jennifer off completely, Detective [=McDylan=] in the third film may have got Jennifer's last attack down from an attempted murder to assault, since by the end of the film she's about to get out after doing just two years in prison.

* ''Film/{{Peppermint}}'': At the end, [[spoiler:Beltran gives Riley a handcuff key when she's under arrest in the hospital, allowing her to escape, since he agrees with her vigilante killings]].
* Creator/CharlieChaplin film ''Film/ThePilgrim'' features TheTramp as an escaped convict masquerading as a minister. After Charlie retrieves the money another hoodlum stole from Charlie's girlfriend, and returns it, the sheriff arrests him. The sheriff then lets Charlie escape to Mexico.
* In ''Film/SuddenImpact'', Inspector Harry Callahan is on the trail of a woman named Jennifer Spencer, who is [[RapeAndRevenge hunting down and killing the men who gangraped her.]] At the climax of the story, one of her would-be victims, Mick holds her hostage with her own gun and Harry kills the man to save her. When the police show up to investigate, Harry shows them the gun in the man's hand and convinces them that he was responsible for all the killings (in truth, the only one of the murders that Mick was responsible for was killing the police chief).

** This also occurs in "[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventure_of_the_Priory_School#Synopsis The Adventure of the Priory School]]". James Wilder, the illegitimate older son of the Duke of Holdernesse, plans to kidnap the Duke's younger son from his school in order to force the Duke to change his will in Wilder's favor. Wilder hires a man called Reuben Hayes to perform the kidnapping, but Hayes murders an innocent teacher who tried to prevent it. Wilder's horror at the event leads him to confess everything to the Duke. Even though Wilder is guilty of kidnapping an innocent boy, conspiracy to commit kidnapping and partial responsibility for the murder, Holmes only turns in Hayes to the police, allowing Wilder to be sent to Australia to seek his fortune. This is notably subverted in the Granada adaptation where Wilder does not get off. Instead he kidnaps the boy himself in a futile attempt to still make the scheme work and dies while hiding in a cave.

** In "The Three Students", when Holmes and his friend confront the student who had copied half the answer key to a upcoming major exam, they find that he had just written a letter withdrawing from the examination in question, and that he was planning to leave the university to take up a job offer in Rhodesia. They decide to accept his repentance and wish him well in his new career.

** In "The Three Gables", Holmes forces Isadora Klein to make restitution to the woman whose house she had robbed, but doesn't turn her in to the police. In this one he even jokes about how often he ends up letting the criminal go ("I suppose I shall have to compound a felony as usual").

The [[Series/{{Poirot}} 2010 adaptation]] raises some of the issues that have been associated with this solution -- for one, Poirot is much more reluctant to let the killers off, because he is revolted by the crime and its motivation even though he admits that the victim [[AssholeVictim had it coming like no other]], and in other stories he has not let such a thing get in the way of the law. The other is that, given the circumstances he and the killers find themselves in, it would be perfectly possible for them to just kill ''him'' before the authorities arrive and pass the killer off as a third party; the book glosses over the fact that even if Poirot ''did'' want to turn them in, he wasn't in much of a position to do so anyway as the killers had him at their mercy. In the end he still lets them off and the killers agree prior to that that murdering Poirot (and the train manager, his friend) would be a MoralEventHorizon none of them are willing to cross, so the original ending still plays out, albeit with more angst.
** And then there's a much more controversial case of Countess Vera Rossakoff in "The Double Clue" short story. True, she's only guilty of robbery, not murder, and Poirot makes her return what she had stolen, but otherwise she was let off scott-free -- for the sole reason that the famous detective fell for her.
* In the Creator/JohnDicksonCarr novel [[spoiler:''The Mad Hatter Mystery'']], Dr. Fell knows who the true murderer is despite the crime having been blamed on another (conveniently dead) character. The true killer confesses to Hadley out of guilt, against Fell's advice, but [[spoiler: on the final page Hadley, Fell, and Ted Rampole decide to let the case remain officially unsolved and let the culprit, whose really committed a manslaughter more at the victim's instigation, go free.]]

* In ''Literature/TheMirrorCrackdFromSideToSide'', it is subtly implied that the main murderer was poisoned by [[spoiler:her husband to save her from public disgrace and prevent more murders]]. Miss Marple suspects this is the case, but keeps quiet.

* In Creator/IsaacAsimov's ''Literature/TheNakedSun'', Elijah Baley calls a SummationGathering and reveals that the murder victim's neighbor, a roboticist named Jothan Leebig, was planning to subvert the ThreeLawsOfRobotics to create an army of {{Killer Robot}}s, and had masterminded the victim's murder to keep him from interfering. Leebig commits suicide rather than being arrested, and no-one notices the fact that Leebig couldn't possibly have carried out the physical deed due to his intense fear of human contact. Baley admits later that, [[TheUntwist as initially suspected]], the victim's wife Gladia was the one who killed her husband, having been manipulated into it by Leebig. Since he sympathized with her circumstances, he felt she didn't deserve to be punished.

** "A Perfect Day" focuses on the murder of a child. It revolves around a family of four, parents and twin girls. The father was a cop and a domestic abuser. The mother tried to take her daughters and leave with her boyfriend, a good man and also a cop. Her husband intercepted them, tried to kill them all and ''did'' kill one of his daughters. The mom left her remaining daughter in a church and hid, the boyfriend didn't know exactly what had happened but was pretty sure the husband/father was responsible and had done something terrible. The father died in a shootout shortly after, and the boyfriend all but admits to taking advantage of the chaos to kill him. The detectives decide there's no need to put that particular statement on the record. (In a final TakeThat to the father, they also have his picture removed from a wall of officers killed in the line of duty at a cop bar, because the father didn't deserve to be remembered as a hero.)
* An episode of ''Series/CriminalMinds'' ("Riding the Lightning") [[InvertedTrope inverted]] this. A woman was on death row for being an accomplice serial killer. The only murder she had admitted to was her son's. The Behavioral Analysis Unit discovered the child was still alive; the woman had hidden him from her husband, the real killer, and wanted to die herself so that her son would grow up not knowing he was descended from such people. The BAU let her be executed for the crime she didn't commit (but Hotch taunted the husband at his execution with a photo of his still living son).

** In one episode, a man was killed at a local university and the forensic evidence destroyed using information gained at a lecture given by one of the cast. After discovering that the [[AssholeVictim deceased]] was a repeat stalker who had [[DrivenToSuicide driven one woman to suicide]] and followed another across multiple states despite a name change, they managed to track down the [[SympatheticMurderer stalkee-turned-killer]] but while they did arrest her, they made a point to tell her that without a confession, there was no way to convict her on such flimsy circumstantial evidence.

* ''Series/Daredevil2015'': Karen Page gets her brother Kevin killed in a car accident when she gets distracted while arguing with him, after she had to save him from being beaten to death by her drug-dealing boyfriend. The local sheriff lets Karen off the hook and alters the accident report to claim that Kevin was alone, out of sympathy for the Pages due to the death of Karen's mother from cancer only a few years earlier and their subsequent financial struggles. However, Karen gets branded as a pariah and is forced to leave Fagan Corners. What happened to Kevin doesn't come back to hurt her until season 3 when Wilson Fisk begins digging, finds out what really happened, and his fixer Felix Manning threatens Karen with public exposure of this information when she tries to talk to him about the dirty work he's doing for Fisk.

** In "Danse Macabre" meanwhile, it turns out [[SuicideNotMurder the murder was actually an elaborate suicide]]. Although this means that the "murderers" were still accomplices to suicide -- a crime in the UK -- Jonathan doesn't turn them in to the police out of obvious sympathy. It's not clear if he turns in [[spoiler:the stalker who stole the corpse's head for a ALoveToDismember. Although it's strongly implied that the head's previous owner, an Expy of Creators/{{Elvira}}, would have taken it in the spirit in which it was intended anyway.]]

** In "Fight" the two brothers actually ''are'' innocent of almost every crime, but Casey points out there's nothing she can do about the gun charge one of them is facing. Fin replies that the gun was "lost" coming back from the crime scene. Casey (and Cragen) sees it for the lie it is, but goes along with it. With that charge gone too, the brothers get to walk away free.

In the United States, this is actually ''expected'' of prosecutors; the reason that federal grand juries and many state grand juries almost always indict anyone who is brought before them is because prosecutors are expected to only go forward in cases where they think they can prove beyond reasonable doubt that someone committed a crime -- a much higher standard than is required for indictment. This is because prosecutors have limited funding to go after everyone, so they only go after the cases they think they can most easily win. States where this is not the expectation have significantly lower rates of indictment by grand juries due to more very weak cases being brought before them.\\\
This trope is averted in many states for police officers, where any case brought by a county-prosecutor is required to go before a grand jury. Grand juries determine whether the prosecution has enough evidence (probable cause) of a case for a criminal indictment. It may be hard to secure a criminal indictment on police because many police departments have statutes authorizing "reasonable use of force" by their officers in order to cause an arrest or if the officer believes the person a danger to society. This is backed by ruling of the Supreme Court (Tennessee v. Garner 1985) which has deemed that police can use lethal force if they have a "reasonable belief" they are facing danger to their life.
* In sentencing, a discharge is a variant of this that can be called Let Off by the Judge. Although the defendant is deemed guilty, they're given no punishment, often because of circumstances out of their control. In the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirsk_rail_crash_(1892) 1892 Thirsk train crash]], for instance, improper signalling due to the signalman falling asleep led to two trains colliding, ten deaths, and numerous injuries. Although the signalman was found guilty of manslaughter, he was given a discharge for multiple reasons: the company he was working for had ignored several bits of protocol that would have also prevented the crash, and the only reason he was sleeping on the job at all was because [[TraumaCongaLine his sick baby daughter had just died after he'd been up for thirty-six hours taking care of her and walking for miles trying to find the local doctor and the railway still didn't give him the day off]].

* During the gunfight at the climax of ''2 Days in the Valley'', a detective's life is saved by a semi-retired hitman. After the shootout the hitman starts to gather up the money from his [[OneLastJob Last Job]] but hesitates when he sees the cop watching him. The cop thinks about it for a minute, then signals the hitman to take his money and go before more police arrive.

** Alison solves the murder in the episode "A Taste of Her Own Medicine" because as the title suggests, it was an AssholeVictim. [[spoiler:An elderly lady poisoned her daughter because the woman was a sociopath who was poisoning her child stepdaughter to get her money and had already successfully murdered the girl's mother to take her place. The murderer was completely unrepentant and her mother took the SadisticChoice of [[OffingTheOffspring poisoning her]].]]

* ''Series/{{Castle}}'' features this idea, with Castle halfheartedly trying to argue this point with Detective Beckett. It occurred when the victim's family found out that she had been murdered and took out the killer themselves. [[spoiler:Beckett points out that it might work out that way in a novel, but not in real life and she arrests the guilty party anyway.]]

** "Justice" has the investigators looking into the gone-cold murder of a university athlete... who the investigation eventually reveals to have been a JerkJock serial rapist, who was confronted by a group of his victims at gunpoint and pretended to be sorry so they would go away (and then the brother of one of said rape victims picked up the gun that the group had tossed into the trash and shot the [[AssholeVictim unrepentant a-hole]] while he was still laughing off the tension and gloating about it). The investigators told the brother ''while they are still interrogating him'' on how to make his confession sound like he had shot the jock in self-defense (which the evidence was circumstantial enough to support).

* An episode of ''Series/CriminalMinds'' ("Riding the Lightning") [[InvertedTrope inverted]] this. A woman was on death row for being a serial killer. The only murder she had admitted to was her son. The Behavioral Analysis Unit discovered the child was still alive; the woman had hid him from her husband, the real killer, and wanted to die herself so that her son would grow up not knowing he was descended from such people. The BAU let her be executed for the crime she didn't commit (but Hotch taunted the husband at his execution with a photo of his still living son).

** In one episode a man was killed at a local university and the forensic evidence destroyed using information gained at a lecture given by one of the cast. After discovering that the [[AssholeVictim deceased]] was a repeat stalker that had [[DrivenToSuicide driven one woman to suicide]] and followed another across multiple states despite a name change they managed to track down the [[SympatheticMurderer stalkee-turned-killer]], but while they did arrest her they made a point to tell her that without a confession there was no way to convict her on such flimsy circumstancial evidence.

* Played with in ''Series/{{Elementary}}''. [[spoiler:Captain Gregson's daughter murders a serial killer who's been stalking Sherlock. Sherlock figures this out but rather than turning her in (which would also get Gregson charged as an accessory) opts to confess to the crime himself using his connections to [=MI6=] to escape punishment (other than being unable to [[PersonaNonGrata return to the US]]). Amusingly the FBI officer guesses that he's not actually the murderer but believes that he's doing it to cover for [[RightForTheWrongReasons Watson instead]]]].

** Alison solves the murder in the episode "A Taste of Her Own Medicine" because as the title suggests it was an AssholeVictim. [[spoiler:An elderly lady poisons her daughter because she was a sociopath who was poisoning her child stepdaughter for getting her money and had already successfully murdered the child's mother to take her place. The murderer was completely unrepentant and her mother took the SadisticChoice of [[OffingTheOffspring poisoning her]].]]

[[folder:Visula Novels]]

* In "Murder Mysteries" by Creator/NeilGaiman, a detective tells the story of his first case, in which the killer had a sympathetic motivation but paid the ultimate price. It's implied that he's telling the story at this time and in this place because the case has parallels to the murder he's currently working -- and that he's decided this time to let the killer off.

* Creator/DorothyLSayers' ''[[Literature/LordPeterWimsey Murder Must Advertise]]'' features an ad agency within which someone is feeding the titles ahead of time to facilitate the operations of a drug ring. The guilty party didn't know their part in in at first, and was trying to provide for their family, so Lord Peter gets them to walk home without looking behind them, and (presumably) be killed by the gang to protect its secrets; protecting the culprit's reputation and hence their family. Not exactly let off, but by the standards of the time public disgrace would have been at least as bad, if not perhaps worse.