Double Jeopardy (1999)

Double Jeopardy is a 1999 American crime thriller film directed by Bruce Beresford and starring Ashley Judd, Tommy Lee Jones, Bruce Greenwood, and Gillian Barber. The film is about a woman wrongfully imprisoned for murder who, while eluding her parole officer, tracks down her husband who had framed her. Released on September 24, the film received mixed reviews from critics and grossed $177 million.

Libby Parsons (Ashley Judd) and her husband Nick (Bruce Greenwood) are wealthy residents of Whidbey Island, Washington. With her best friend Angela Green offering to look after their two-year-old son, Matty, Libby and Nick go sailing for a romantic weekend. Libby awakens to find blood everywhere and her husband missing. The Coast Guard patrol arrive and find Libby holding a bloody knife on deck.

Even with Nick's body unaccounted for, Libby is eventually arrested, tried, and convicted of murder, with the motives being a two-million dollar life insurance policy and Nick's being under investigation for embezzlement. Libby asks Angela to look after Matty while she is in prison. At first, Angela brings Matty to visit often, but the visits eventually cease. Libby tracks Angela to San Francisco and calls her. In the midst of their conversation, Nick enters the apartment, and Matty yells, "Daddy!" Libby realizes that Nick faked his death and framed her to run off with Angela. After failing to get investigative help, a fellow inmate tells Libby to get paroled for good behavior by falsely claiming remorse for "killing" Nick. Once free, Libby can kill Nick with impunity due to the Double Jeopardy Clause in the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

After six years in prison, Libby is paroled to a halfway house, under the close supervision of parole officer Travis Lehman (Tommy Lee Jones), a former law professor whose wife and daughter left him due to his alcoholism. To search for Nick, Libby violates curfew and is caught breaking into Matty's old school on Whidbey Island to get Angela's records. As Lehman delivers Libby back to prison via a car ferry, he handcuffs her to the car door handle and leaves to go topside. Libby sees that he left the keys, starts the car, and rams the handle against a pipe, loosening it. Lehman sees her and tries to intervene, but as he gets into the car by breaking a window she drives it off the ferry. As the car sinks, he uncuffs her, and in the underwater confusion she takes his gun and swims away. She visits her mother who gives her cash and her truck.

At a car dealership Libby uses Angela's social security number to learn her address, but when she drives to Colorado she learns from Angela's former neighbor that Angela, under a different name, died three years earlier in a home gas explosion. A picture in the paper reveals a piece of artwork, a painting by Wassily Kandinsky owned by Nick, which Libby is able to trace to New Orleans through an art gallery. There she finds Nick running a small luxury hotel under the alias Jonathan Devereaux.

Libby confronts Nick during a fund-raising auction at his hotel, and demands that he return Matty in exchange for her walking away. Nick claims he faked his death in order to provide her with the insurance money, not believing she would be convicted. During their conversation Libby sees Lehman arrive at the hotel, and leaves. Lehman tells "Jonathan" that Libby believes he is her dead ex-husband, and informs the local police that she is in the area.

The next day Libby arranges to meet Nick at Lafayette Cemetery No. 3 (filmed at Lafayette Cemetery No. 1) to hand off Matty. Nick hires a boy to lure Libby to a mausoleum, where Nick knocks Libby out and locks her in a coffin. She shoots the hinges off the coffin lid with Lehman's gun, pushes it aside, and breaks the mausoleum's window. Meanwhile, while checking in on "Jonathan", Lehman notices the Kandinsky artwork that Libby was searching for in the gallery. Now unsure of Libby's guilt, he requests that Washington fax him the driver's license for "Nicholas Parsons". Washington discourages him from continuing the search when the first result shows a clearly different man.

Furious, Libby returns to the hotel. Lehman intercepts her, and she breaks down, emotionally spent. Lehman goes to Nick's hotel, where he reveals to Nick that there were actually six "Nicholas Parsons" with driver's licenses in Washington, and that he knows his true identity. Lehman agrees to take a $1,000,000 bribe, and Nick strongly hints that he killed Libby. Libby emerges from a back room with Lehman's gun, and instead of killing Nick she shoots a hole in the Kandinsky. Nick then tells her what boarding school Matty is at. Lehman reveals that he has recorded the confession, and Nick pulls a gun from his desk, shoots Lehman in the shoulder, and in the ensuing fight Nick gets the upper hand and is about to shoot Lehman again when Libby, who has recovered her gun, kills Nick. She plans to disappear, but Lehman insists they go back to Washington to get her pardoned, which they do. They then find Matty at the boarding school in Georgia, where he immediately recognizes his mother.