Posted on 06/22/2022 12:43:06 PM PDT by Michael.SF.
The federal government prosecuted Merle Denezpi twice for the same crime. It also punished him twice: the first time with 140 days in a federal detention center, the second time with a prison sentence more than 70 times as long.
Although that may seem like an obvious violation of the Fifth Amendment's ban on double jeopardy, the Supreme Court last week ruled that it wasn't. As the six justices in the majority saw it, that puzzling conclusion was the logical result of the Court's counterintuitive precedents on this subject.
The Fifth Amendment says no person shall "be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb." But under the Court's longstanding "dual sovereignty" doctrine, an offense is not "the same" when it is criminalized by two different governments.
That doctrine allows serial state and federal prosecutions for the same crime, opening the door to double punishment or a second trial after an acquittal. Although neither seems just, the Court says both are perfectly constitutional.
The justices reaffirmed that view in a 2019 case involving a man with a felony record who was convicted twice and punished twice for illegally possessing a gun -- first in state court, then in federal court. Although the elements of the crime were the same in both cases, the majority said, the two prosecutions did not amount to double jeopardy because they involved two different "sovereigns."
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
I disagree with the decision as I also see it as double jeopardy but I see where they’re coming from.
The federal government acts independently of the states, having separate court systems, laws and processes. Even if the crime is the same incident, the laws being broken are two separate laws.
Frankly this could be fixed in congress easily - but don’t hold your breath.
THERE MUST BE A GREAT DEAL MORE TO THIS OPINION THAN WE KNOW!
I would not vouch for others, but I can not imagine CLARENCE THOMAS, or SAMUEL ALITO, ever voting AGAINST the prohibition of DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
I generally agree with the ruling. The solution to injustice is to write just laws and enforce them equally. Hate crimes laws are not just because they are applied unequally by design.
But it would be nice if the ruling provided a balance to the supremacy clause so that states could reasonably enforce things like unlawful entry into the country.
Can we make it a serious felony to be unlawfully present in a state?
Can state and local law enforcement assert equal jurisdiction at crime scenes and refuse to allow federal agents to disrupt an ongoing investigation?
Generally, this ruling will allow the continued abuse of power by the federal government and the DOJ in particular.
It is, by the clear reading of the constitution. Like asset forfeiture laws such rulings and laws are an afront to the principles of basic American justice.
The criminal was convicted by a Native American court and sentenced to 5 months. The court could not sentence more than 12 months. Then the US government got into the act, so technically two different nations, same crime.
Civil suits are different than criminal court. No double jeopardy
Simpson doesn’t apply but the Rodney king cops was a clear violation of the double jeopardy rule. They just changed the label and charged the cops again to keep the rioting at bay.
Oh wait!
You mean to say Roberts voted the right way on this one, but Trump's faux "originalist" Gorsuch voted to the LEFT of Roberts AGAIN, and sided with the Marxist judges AGAIN?
Whoops.
Well, nothing to see here folks! Besides, I'm sure Gorsuch has some really awesome 'libertarian' reason for doing so. The wise Latina who agrees with him on all this stuff is very libertarian, right? And he's a textualist or whatever... and he's just bein' a good originalist and voting the way the writers of the law ORIGINALLY intended... like when he said the writers of the civil rights act TOTALLY had trannies in woman's restrooms in mind when they wrote the law the in 1964...whatever...
IT'S ONLY BAD WHEN ROBERTS DOES IT!
Now, move on, please.
Ohio can prosecute for assault and battery, plus kidnapping.
The United States can prosecute for kidnapping and murder resulting from that kidnapping.
Indiana can prosecute for murder and abuse of a corpse.
See my previous comment from Post #16. There is no damn good reason for the U.S. to prosecute anyone in this case. The kidnapping took place in Ohio. The murder took place in Indiana. Prosecuting those two crimes should be sufficient to render justice in this case.
Aside from the constitutional issues, you run into a practical problem in having multiple prosecutions for the same alleged crime. In the example you cited, there is a distinct possibility that someone is prosecuted in Federal court in a kidnapping-murder case where the defendant has been acquitted of kidnapping in Ohio and acquitted of murder in Indiana. That itself is bad enough, but this chain of events also introduces the possibility that the Feds will prosecute a kidnap-murder case where another culprit who has no connection to the Federal defendant is later convicted of the crime in Ohio and/or Indiana.
This is the kind of crap that leads to a total loss of respect for the law.
The OJ Simpson cases are on a different difference. The murder case was for a crime, the civil case was for money damages, no risk to life or limb or liberty, just to checkbook.
What SCOTUS is endorsing is a person being charged and tried twice in crimimal courts, by the government, for the same act. Once by a state, once by the feds. makes sense. We each have more than one government as an adversary. It’s the nature of living under federalism.
The US guvm’nt will never willingly deprive itself of another tool to use against its subjects.
They are saying that Native American Reservations, are in the United States, but have separate criminal codes and are sovereign.
Except; most accept native Americans as US citizens at birth (born on US soil and under the control of the US government. Further, since Biden can executive order shutdown of drilling and fracking on Native American reservations, they can no longer be considered sovereign.
I agree with the minority opinion here.
As far as I can tell. being charged by the state the crime was committed in, and then being charged by the Federal government is actually two different crimes.
The state has its own law and the Fed has a different law.
I think this could be easily abused and a real government answerable to the people would try to fix it, but the Rodney King trial shows what the Feds really will do.
“Remember the guys in the Rodney King case were tried twice, with the 2nd trial being for violating civil rights? The legal reasoning, as I understand it, was that the trials were for different legal violations.”
The first trial was under California law in the California court system. The second trial was under Federal law in the Federal court system. Different crimes, different courts, and different prosecuting jurisdictions. No double-jeopardy.
I think this got messy because an indian tribe was involved
And that should be highlighted.
I will read and understand wtf before i do a kneejerk
“I believe that if a state law preexists the federal law, the state law should be supreme and constitute sole jurisdiction. Gonna have to change the Constitution to get there, though.”
It depends on the charges.
A defendant can be brought up on state charges for, say, battery; then the feds can have a go at him for, say, civil rights violations. Both arising out of the same act (battery).
Yup, there are all kinds of scenarios where both the state and the feds have separate causes of action.
The Constitution never gave the Federal government police powers. So there should not even be federal laws that address common crimes that are already being policed by individual states and local communities.
Federal crimes should be crimes that are explicitly committed against the federal government, and that’s it.
The problem here is also selective prosecution, because every murder, every illegal drug possession, is actual a violation of federal and local law, but the defendants are rarely charged twice and tried twice and punished twice. It should come as a surprise to no one, that when they choose to do this, is it for a weapon possession charge.
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