Opinion ID: 814134
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Multiplicity of Count 5 and Counts 12-17

Text: Where “the same act or transaction constitutes a violation of two distinct statutory provisions, the test to be applied to determine whether there are two offenses or only one is whether each provision requires proof of a fact which the other does not.” Blockburger, 284 U.S. at 304. Under this so-called same-elements test—sometimes referred to as the Blockburger test—unless the two offenses each 2 The STA time period undisputedly was tolled for fifty-five days between Grimes’s arraignment in the District of South Dakota and the start of his trial because of pre-trial motions. See 18 U.S.C. § 3161(h)(1)(D). -7- contain an element not found in the other, they are the same offense and double jeopardy bars additional punishment. United States v. Robertson, 606 F.3d 943, 950 (8th Cir. 2010) (citing United States v. Dixon, 509 U.S. 688, 696 (1993)). Grimes argues that Count 5, charging him with violating subsection D, which criminalizes “mak[ing] or caus[ing] the telephone of another repeatedly or continuously to ring, with the intent to harass any person at the called number,” charges the same conduct as the offenses in Counts 12-17, charging him with violating subsection E, which criminalizes “mak[ing] repeated telephone calls or repeatedly initiat[ing] communication with a telecommunications device, during which conversation or communication ensues, solely to harass any person at the called number or who receives the communication.” The Government counters that the telephone calls charged in the subsection D offense are not the same calls charged in the subsection E offenses and that the statutory elements for the two offenses are different. We conclude that the charges are not multiplicitous because each statutory provision contains an element not found in the other. Subsection E requires that “conversation or communication ensues,” 47 U.S.C. § 223(a)(1)(E), an element not found in subsection D, which requires only that a defendant cause “the telephone of another to repeatedly or continuously ring, with the intent to harass,” Id. § 223(a)(1)(D). While subsection D does not require ensuing conversation or communication, it requires that the telephone ring “repeatedly or continuously,” an element not found in subsection E. See id. Grimes argues that the “repeatedly or continuously” ringing requirement in subsection D is contained implicitly in subsection E because one cannot engage in repeated telephone “communication[s]” without the telephone ringing for each communication, thus causing the telephone to ring repeatedly. This, however, is not necessarily the case, nor is such repeated ringing an element of a subsection E -8- offense. If, for example, an individual’s telephone is set to silence the ringer or to forward all calls directly to an answering machine or voicemail system, the telephone will not ring at all, yet a communication still can ensue in the form of a voicemail message, and the requirements of subsection E nonetheless would be satisfied. Therefore, because the subsection D offense charged in Count 5 and the subsection E offenses charged in Counts 12-17 each require the Government to prove an element not found in the other, we conclude that the Blockburger same-elements test is satisfied and that the counts are not multiplicitous.