Libby Parsons (Ashley Judd) is a happily married woman who is very involved with her son, Matty, and enjoys her husband's success (Bruce Greenwood). When she spends a romantic weekend on a sailboat with Nick, things take a sharp turn. While at sea, she is falsely accused of his assassination. She is soon behind bars, putting her son in the care of her best friend, Angie (Annabeth Gish).
Soon after Libby is imprisoned, Angie vanishes. The convicted murderer locates her friend living in San Francisco with Matty - and the still much alive Nick - with some fellow inmates' assistance. Libby does not seek vengeance while in prison, preferring to wait patiently for her release (advice that she gets from the same two inmates above who welcome her with open arms for no apparent reason and seem to help her with everything accordingly). One of the two prisoners is a former lawyer who explains that because Libby has already been accused of murdering her husband, she cannot be charged again under the fifth amendment.
Libby is paroled to a halfway house under Travis Lehman's care (Tommy Lee Jones) after a suspiciously short amount of time for a convicted murderer. The hunt for her adored son begins from there. Her search holds her out past curfew one night. She becomes aware of this and leaves the state. Travis pursues him, establishing a manhunt within a manhunt. The rest of the movie is as predictable as one would expect, with plot twists that barely impress the audience in the payoff scene.
Some films have gained a specific immunity to the laws of realistically imaginable plots. Double Jeopardy is a blatant violation of the right. While the fifth amendment clause isn't far-fetched, there are a few minor specifics that are. I'm sure that Libby's possession of a murder weapon, destruction of at least two vehicles, the continuous fleeing of states, breaking and entering into a school, and destruction of federal property would put her back in prison. It also strikes me as especially impressive that the cops always appear precisely the right time, and Libby still manages to get away by tripping up the officers in the manner of the Keystone Cops. Ironically, it is the same branch of government that convicts her so quickly and effectively in the first place, although there is no body to show the jury.
If there was ever evidence that acting can't make up for a lousy script, this is it. When Ashley Judd and Tommy Lee Jones' biographies are published in the future, this film will be conveniently left out because not even their two performances saved it from the ranks of pay-television marathons. This is most likely the last sentence you'll ever hear about Double Jeopardy.