the.com/double jeopardy

means A legal principle that bars the government from prosecuting or punishing someone twice for the same offense once the first trial has reached a conclusion.

from From 'jeopardy,' which comes through French 'jeu parti' — literally a 'divided game' or 'even chance,' a term from gambling and chess for a situation where the stakes could go either way. By the time it entered English legal use, 'jeopardy' meant risk of loss or harm — specifically the peril a defendant faces at trial. 'Double jeopardy' simply names the forbidden act of putting someone in that peril a second time for the same crime; the phrase itself dates to early English common law, which treated a second prosecution as a basic unfairness long before it was written into constitutions.