Opinion ID: 853754
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Double Jeopardy Precedent and Purpose

Text: Double jeopardy, like due process of law, is an umbrella term that has evolved over time and embraces several discrete concepts. Thus it is important to understand the various circumstances and the different procedural postures in which double jeopardy has been asserted. Situations that defendants have claimed give rise to a claim of double jeopardy include: (1) a single act that violates multiple statutes with no common elements (sale of cocaine to a minor as both dealing and contributing to delinquency); (2) a single act that violates multiple statutes with both common elements and distinct elements (rape and child molest); (3) included offenses where all the elements of one crime are among those of the other (cocaine possession and cocaine possession with intent to deliver); (4) a single act that violates a single statute but creates more than one victim (multiple murders committed with a single bullet or bomb); (5) closely related acts that injure the same victim (robbery and battery such as we have in this case); and (6) closely related acts that create separate injuries. [2] The double jeopardy concerns raised in these various contexts are not the same. Nonetheless, as elaborated below, courts frequently treat them as interchangeable. Double jeopardy claims arise in differing procedural postures as well as varying fact patterns. The clause has been invoked in both multiple punishments imposed in the same trial and to subsequent prosecutions of the same defendant. Frequently the cases dealing with one context cite precedent from another without commenting on any potential difference between the two. More frequently, after 1969, we find cases correctly citing North Carolina v. Pearce, 395 U.S. 711, 89 S.Ct. 2072, 23 L.Ed.2d 656 (1969), for the proposition that double jeopardy bars multiple punishments without focusing on whether the federal and state constitutions are identical in this respect, or precisely what Pearce meant by that language. In my view, however, subsequent prosecutions for a single act and convictions for multiple crimes in a single prosecution turn on entirely different considerations [3] some constitutional and some notand require different treatment. [4] As used in this opinion, multiple punishments is shorthand for the latter, although the term may fairly describe other situations including some that may implicate constitutional double jeopardy concerns.
Confusion over double jeopardy is not new. Over twenty years ago, this Court addressed punishment for multiple offenses under the Fifth Amendment and reviewed several of our recent decisions which appear[ed] to be in conflict. Elmore v. State, 269 Ind. 532, 533, 382 N.E.2d 893, 894 (1978). As we recently noted in Games v. State, there is no authority from this Court establishing an independent state double jeopardy protection based upon an analysis of the Indiana Constitution. 684 N.E.2d 466, 473 n. 7 (Ind.1997), modified on reh'g, 690 N.E.2d 211 (Ind.1997), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 119 S.Ct. 98, 142 L.Ed.2d 78 (1998). [5] Specifically, there has been, and remains, widespread confusion in the decisional law and in the commentary as to what constitutes the same offense, and under what circumstances the protection against double jeopardy may be invoked. Although I concede that today's case is decided in the light of several relatively recent precedents stating or assuming that multiple punishments for the same offense implicate the constitutional right, this notion lacks foundation in either constitutional text, constitutional principle or solid authority. First as a matter of syntax, Article I, § 14 does not appear to deal with multiple punishments at all. As this Court recently observed in another context, the cardinal principle of constitutional construction [is] that words are to be considered as used in their ordinary sense. Ajabu v. State, 693 N.E.2d 921, 929 (Ind.1998) (quoting Tucker v. State, 218 Ind. 614, 670, 35 N.E.2d 270, 291 (1941)). The relevant portion of Article I, § 14 provides that [n]o person shall be put in jeopardy twice for the same offense. As Justice Scalia pointed out in his dissent in Department of Revenue of Montana v. Kurth Ranch, 511 U.S. 767, 798, 114 S.Ct. 1937, 128 L.Ed.2d 767 (1994): `[t]o be put in jeopardy' does not remotely mean `to be punished,' so by its terms this provision prohibits, not multiple punishments, but only multiple prosecutions. [6] Second, Indiana authority does not provide a sound footing for applying double jeopardy to multiple punishment cases. Indeed it is very clear that some of the seminal cases cited for the proposition that multiple punishments implicate Article I, § 14 of the Indiana Constitution stand for precisely the opposite conclusion. The majority suggests that multiple punishment challenges under Article I, § 14 first began appearing in the 1930s. See 717 N.E.2d at 43 n. 25. Of the eleven cases cited by the majority, seven neither mention double jeopardy nor refer to either the federal or the state constitution. [7] Three other cases recite a defendant's invocation of double jeopardy protection, but the Court's analysis turns on common law principles. [8] The remaining case rejects the defendant's claim that constitutional double jeopardy prohibits separate convictions for drawing and aiming a firearm, citing Blockburger and rules of statutory construction. [9] This Court itself did not explicitly state that multiple punishments in one proceeding violated Article I, § 14 until Bevill v. State, 472 N.E.2d 1247, 1253 (Ind.1985), which was clearly incorrect in citing earlier authority for this assertion. To understand this point, begin with Kokenes v. State, 213 Ind. 476, 13 N.E.2d 524 (1938), which the majority cites as an example of a multiple punishment double jeopardy case. That case held that convictions for a greater and lesser included offense (armed robbery and robbery) could not stand. It is not at all clear however, that Kokenes is a constitutional double jeopardy case under either the federal or state constitution. First, although Kokenes cites some double jeopardy cases dealing with subsequent prosecutions, there is no mention in Kokenes of either constitution. The only mention of the term jeopardy is to point out that because defendant was convicted of robbery and armed robbery in the same case there was no former jeopardy. [10] Id. at 480, 13 N.E.2d at 526 (emphasis in original). Nonetheless, the robbery conviction was thrown out in Kokenes because a defendant may not be convicted of committing a robbery and committing a robbery while armed, where the same identical robbery is involved. Id. at 479, 13 N.E.2d at 526. The Court thus spoke only in common law language, not in constitutional terms, and invoked a rule that bars the dual convictions while in the very same opinion rejecting a claim of former jeopardy. The authorities cited by Kokenes also demonstrate that it was purely a common law holding. For example, Jackson v. State, 14 Ind. 327, 328 (1860), was cited for the proposition that the state cannot split up one crime and prosecute it in parts. Jackson made no mention of the constitution and cites only common law authorities. Kokenes also cited State v. Elder, 65 Ind. 282 (1879), which recognized the common law roots of the former jeopardy doctrine and concluded that: No person shall be put in jeopardy twice for the same offense is a common-law principle, which, we believe, is incorporated into the constitutions of each of the States which compose the United States. This provision, however, has not been interpreted and applied uniformly throughout all the States. In some it has been held to mean no more than the common law principle. Id. at 284. The Elder court summarized the then already confusing state of the law in a set of principles, all of which dealt with whether a subsequent prosecution could be brought. It supported its summary of the law with a series of citations to the distinguished treatises of its day that very clearly dealt only with the problem of subsequent prosecutions [11] and a long list of cases from Indiana and elsewhere. The first two cited Indiana cases are Jackson, 14 Ind. at 327, and Bruce v. State, 9 Ind. 206 (1857). Neither of these cases made any mention of either the state or federal constitution. Each held a second prosecution barred by reason of a prior prosecution, citing the rule that an earlier prosecution for the same offense would bar a second. In 1969, Benton v. Maryland, 395 U.S. 784, 89 S.Ct. 2056, 23 L.Ed.2d 707 (1969), for the first time held the Fifth Amendment Double Jeopardy Clause applicable to state criminal proceedings. In the same year Pearce announced the federal doctrine that the Fifth Amendment applied to multiple punishments. Three years later in Thompson v. State, 259 Ind. 587, 290 N.E.2d 724 (1972), this Court explicitly rejected a claim that double jeopardy applied to multiple punishments, citing both the Fifth Amendment and Art. I, § 14 of the Indiana Constitution: The Double Jeopardy clause is assurance that the State will not be allowed to make repeated attempts to convict an accused for the same offense. U.S. CONST. amen. V and XIV; IND. CONST. Art. 1, § 14; See Benton v. Maryland, (1969), 395 U.S. 784, 89 S.Ct. 2056, 23 L.Ed.2d 707; Green v. United States, (1957), 355 U.S. 184, 78 S.Ct. 221, 61 A.L.R.2d 1119, 2 L.Ed.2d 199; Armentrout v. State, (1938), 214 Ind. 273, 15 N.E.2d 363. Since Appellant has been subjected to only one judicial proceeding for the offenses charged, his claim of double jeopardy is inappropriate. 259 Ind. at 591-92, 290 N.E.2d at 726 (emphasis in original). Thompson nonetheless held the dual conviction impermissible, not as a matter of federal or state constitutional double jeopardy doctrine, but rather as a matter of state law: [w]e hold that before the court may enter judgment and impose sentence upon multiple counts, the facts giving rise to the various offenses must be independently supportable, separate and distinct. Id. at 592, 290 N.E.2d at 727. I take it that this formulation as applied to multiple punishments amounts to essentially the same thing as today's majority's more precise way of putting itthere should be no reasonable possibility that the same set of facts supports two convictions. The Court next used the term double jeopardy in the course of an opinion rejecting the defendant's claim that his convictions for asportation and kidnaping were error because the two were separate offenses. Neal v. State, 266 Ind. 665, 366 N.E.2d 650 (1977). It is only when two offenses require proof of the same fact or act that double jeopardy considerations bar a prosecution for both. Id. at 667, 366 N.E.2d at 651. The Court did not cite either constitution for this proposition. Elmore, 269 Ind. at 532, 382 N.E.2d at 893, seems to be the first case to deal with multiple punishments solely as a constitutional double jeopardy issue. Elmore, citing Pearce, viewed the issue solely as a Fifth Amendment problem and made no mention of the state constitution. Elmore expressly and correctly observed that Thompson was incorrect insofar as it dealt with the federal constitutional standard. But Elmore did not address the question whether Thompson remained a correct statement of Indiana common law. Elmore dealt with a single trial that produced convictions for both theft and conspiracy to commit theft. The Court of Appeals, invoking the common law doctrine of merger, held that the two convictions merged. On transfer this Court took the view, which was inconsistent with both venerable [12] and then recent [13] authorities, that [t]oday, the problem of when a trial court may impose multiple punishments upon convictions on multiple counts at a single trial is a problem controlled largely by the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment. Id. at 533, 382 N.E.2d at 894. Applying Blockburger, the Court found that the convictions were proper because they were not based on the same offense. Elmore noted that earlier Indiana authorities had developed a same evidence [14] test to secure the rights found in the double jeopardy provision of the state constitution [15] and observed that this Court's previous holdings on multiple punishments were often consistent with federal double jeopardy even if they did not seem to derive from it. Id. at 536, 382 N.E.2d at 896. Because Fifth Amendment double jeopardy had been held applicable to state criminal proceedings in Benton, Elmore concluded that [n]ow that we are bound by the federal Double Jeopardy Clause, it more necessary than ever that we be in line with federal standards. 269 Ind. at 537, 382 N.E.2d at 896. Insofar as Elmore has any implication for the state constitution, it turns on the proposition that because the federal Double Jeopardy Clause applies to the states, the state doctrine (whether common law or constitutional) should be conformed to federal constitutional law. This is contrary to current state constitutional law in Indiana and other states. To be sure, we have often adopted federal constitutional rules in interpreting their state counterpart. See, e.g., Ajabu, 693 N.E.2d at 927 (adopting the rule of Moran v. Burbine, 475 U.S. 412, 106 S.Ct. 1135, 89 L.Ed.2d 410 (1986), as to self incrimination). But we frequently find Indiana judicial precedent, history or other factors to dictate a different result under the state provision, even where the federal and state constitutions are textually similar or even identical. See, e.g., Brown v. State, 653 N.E.2d 77 (Ind.1995) (unreasonable search or seizure); Collins v. Day, 644 N.E.2d 72 (Ind.1994) (equal privileges and immunities); Price v. State, 622 N.E.2d 954 (1993) (free speech). Indeed, all of the opinions in this case tread this independent path. The first significant [16] post- Elmore authority to refer expressly to Article I, § 14 of the Indiana Constitution appears to be Bevill, 472 N.E.2d at 1247, which cited Thompson as the Indiana authority, paired with Pearce, in referring to the prohibitions of the Indiana Constitution, Article I, § 14 and the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution against multiple punishments for the same offense. Id. at 1253. It is of course correct that Pearce stated that doctrine as to the Fifth Amendment. But Thompson, which dealt with convictions in the same trial for possessing and dealing the same drugs, held unequivocally that double jeopardy had nothing to do with multiple punishment. Only after Bevill was decided in 1985, do we find cases referring to double jeopardy and citing state and federal constitutions in dealing with multiple punishments. And in every instance, as Games noted, there is no suggestion that there is any difference between the two constitutions. From this line of cases, I take it that notwithstanding the somewhat suspect [17] announcement in Pearce that the federal Double Jeopardy Clause bars multiple punishments, there is no such holding in Indiana except to the extent that a number of cases in the last two decades, bound by federal constitutional doctrine as it existed before the U.S. Supreme Court decision in U.S. v. Dixon, 509 U.S. 688, 113 S.Ct. 2849, 125 L.Ed.2d 556 (1993), sometimes recited this federal rule, usually citing Pearce. Although these more recent cases purported to resolve claims under both the state and federal constitutions, they did so without any discussion as to how or where or why this newfound state rule arose. In no case was anyone contending that there was a difference between the two constitutions. Because federal constitutional law is binding on this Court, these cases' reference to the state constitution was pure dicta. These cases, of which Bevill is an example, appropriately cited Pearce for the proposition that multiple punishments implicate federal double jeopardy protection. But to the extent they cited any authority, for example Thompson, for the same proposition under the Indiana Constitution, they did so inaccurately, and contrary to the express holding of Thompson. The sum of this is that, although there is a great deal of dicta on the point, no case from this Court has considered whether the Indiana Constitution raises a bar higher than or different from the Fifth Amendment. And as far as I can see, in no case until Games conformed Indiana's understanding of federal double jeopardy to Dixon, did the Court note any potential for difference.
I do not mean to suggest that the Indiana cases finding bars to multiple punishment were incorrectly decided in their results. As Justice Sullivan's opinion shows, these cases have in recent years been cited for a number of propositions barring multiple punishment for the same act. However, I believe the decisions that have found Indiana's constitutional provision, or its counterparts in other constitutions, to prohibit multiple punishments have in many, if not most, cases unnecessarily invoked constitutional artillery where a statutory or common law rifle would do the job. As noted, Kokenes held that a lesser included offense cannot result in a conviction in addition to the greater offense, but did so solely as a matter of common law. We also have case law making clear that a conspiracy conviction cannot stand if the overt act is the crime that is the object of the agreement, that a single element cannot enhance two offenses and that the same act and consequences cannot support multiple convictions. Multiple convictions in these cases are barred by the rule established in Thompson that before the court may enter judgment and impose sentence upon multiple counts, the facts giving rise to the various offenses must be independently supportable, separate and distinct. 259 Ind. at 592, 290 N.E.2d at 727. See also Candler, 266 Ind. at 440, 363 N.E.2d at 1233 (same); Williams, 266 Ind. at 668, 366 N.E.2d at 642 (same); Franks v. State, 262 Ind. 649, 323 N.E.2d 221 (1975) (convictions and sentences for both felony murder and premeditated murder were error where there was only one killing). Although the Elmore decision disapproved the Thompson rule that facts giving rise to various offenses must be independently supportable, separate and distinct as the appropriate standard for Fifth Amendment multiple punishment challenges, I conclude that it is nonetheless a viable doctrine under Indiana common law, as Bevill demonstrated, even if Bevill incorrectly attributed it to the Constitution. These common law doctrines are supported by the well-settled rule that legislative reenactment after a statute has been construed by the courts will imply that the statute was adopted with the interpretation and construction which said courts had enumerated. McIntyre v. State, 170 Ind. 163, 164, 83 N.E. 1005, 1006 (1908). Whether or not the more recent cases announcing these rules were correct in claiming that they are derived in part from the federal constitution or Article I, § 14 of the Indiana Constitution, there can be no doubt that these rules have been applied repeatedly over the years. Accordingly, we may assume the legislature intended the criminal laws to be interpreted in concert with these doctrines. This point is particularly powerful in light of the adoption of the 1976 criminal code on the heels of the then recent decisions in Thompson and Candler. We also have in Indiana statutory prohibitions based on the Model Penal Code that prohibit convictions for (1) conspiracy and attempt to commit the same crime; and (2) an attempt and the crime attempted. IND.CODE § 35-41-5-3 (1998). As noted in Part II, we have a statutory prohibition against sentencing a person for both a crime and an included offense in the same case. Id. § 35-38-1-6. These provisions were taken in 1976 from the Model Penal Code and have counterparts in the then proposed but never adopted Federal Criminal Code. The Indiana Criminal Law Study Commission assumed that the state and federal constitutional provisions were coextensive. CRIMINAL LAW STUDY COMMISSION, INDIANA PENAL CODE PROPOSED FINAL DRAFT 51 (1974). This assumption was made at the time Blockburger was under severe attack, [18] and long before the federal constitutional doctrine moved first to Grady, then through Dixon back to an entrenched and refortified Blockburger analysis. At the time this assumption was expressed, there was, as far as I can see, no explicit contention or suggestion that the state constitutional provision might have a different content from the Fifth Amendment, as Games suggests. Certainly Thompson expressed a different view of both constitutions as of 1972. In any event, even if the Commission's assumption was correct, it does not amount to a commitment of Indiana state law to unknown future federal doctrinal developments. Rather, at best it is a recognition that double jeopardy law as it was understood in 1976 is reflected in some or all of these statutory provisions. However, as already noted, at least some of these rules are derived from common law doctrines that predated both state and federal constitutions and to some extent go beyond the requirements of either constitution. They are nonetheless well understood and generally workable principles that require no constitutional footing. The problem of multiple punishments can thus be handled as a matter of common law doctrines or statutory construction, guided either by explicit direction from the legislature, as the cited statutes provide, or by commonly cited rules of statutory construction and presumed legislative intent.
Finding a constitutional dimension in multiple punishment cases under double jeopardy doctrine does not add to the protection already afforded under other provisions of the state and federal constitutions. As Justice Souter put it in his separate concurring and dissenting opinion in Dixon, the multiple punishment branch of double jeopardy law is designed to ensure that the accused is not receiving for one offense more than the punishment authorized. 509 U.S. at 744, 113 S.Ct. 2849, 125 L.Ed.2d 556. To achieve this, however, we need no further constitutional basis than the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and the due course of law provision of our Indiana Constitution. A sentence in excess of that authorized by law violates these provisions and more. It is not merely an unconstitutional ex post facto increase of sentence; it is an imposition of a penalty never authorized at all. As such, it is plainly invalid. Thus resort to double jeopardy is wholly unnecessary to invalidate a sentence outside the penalties provided by statute. The issue is simply whether the statute does or does not authorize the punishment. To make the same point another way, it trivializes the Double Jeopardy Clause to equate it, as federal doctrine does, with legislative intent. [19] For example, our courts have held that one serious bodily injury cannot elevate both robbery and battery to Class A felonies. Odom v. State, 647 N.E.2d 377 (Ind.Ct.App.1995). However, the legislature could create a new class of AA felonies that consist of inflicting serious bodily injury by battery in the course of a robbery with penalties equal to the sum of present sentences for two Class A felonies. As the Supreme Court noted sixty years ago, [t]here is nothing in the Constitution which prevents Congress from punishing separately each step leading to the consummation of a transaction which it has the power to prohibit and punishing also the completed transaction. Albrecht v. United States, 273 U.S. 1, 47 S.Ct. 250, 71 L.Ed. 505 (1927). The Indiana Court of Appeals similarly observed, there was nothing to prevent the Legislature from enacting a statute making each step leading up to the sale of intoxicating liquor as a beverage unlawful, and, in doing so, it made the possession of intoxicating liquor and the maintenance of a place for persons to congregate for the purpose of drinking separate offenses. Thompson v. State, 89 Ind.App. 555, 559, 167 N.E. 345, 346 (1929). One can imagine a calibrated criminal code with finely graduated sentences for each aggravating element that would produce in net result the same sentence as multiple punishments for various combinations of crimes under existing law. The General Assembly has wisely chosen not to complicate matters with such an intricate criminal code, but if it did so, there would be no double jeopardy bar. [20] If all the legislature must do to impose higher penalties is properly identify one combined offense where two were formerly spelled out, the Double Jeopardy Clause presents no check on legislative piling on. Similarly, if one objective of the Double Jeopardy Clause is or ought to be restriction of prosecutorial discretion, the omnibus crime does restrict that discretion, if viewed as the alternative to the list of component crimes under current law. But the legislature is also free to create a series of ascendingly complex crimes, each a lesser included of those above it. Under such a regime, prosecutorial discretion to select the crime to be charged from this smorgasbord is unbounded, just as multiple counts give the prosecutor major bargaining power today. Ultimately the decision rests with the legislature to vest or not vest wider prosecutorial discretion to charge crimes with greater or lesser penalties. This remains true whatever view one has of the Double Jeopardy Clause.
The conclusion that double jeopardy under Article I, § 14 is not implicated by multiple punishments in the same trial is fortified by the fact that, unlike the federal constitution, the Indiana Constitution includes other provisions that restrict the ability of a prosecutor or a court to pile on by finding multiple statutory violations in a single action. First, Article I, § 16 imposes a requirement that penalties be proportioned to the nature of the offense. Although courts defer substantially to legislative judgment in setting the penalties for defined crimes, the legislature is not free from restraint under this provision. See, e.g., Conner v. State, 626 N.E.2d 803 (Ind.1993). Second, the appellate courts of this state are authorized under Article VII, §§ 4 and 6 to review and revise sentences, and on occasion do so based on a judgment that the punishment is excessive in relation to the crime or the nature of the offense and the character of the offender. See Ind. Appellate Rule 17(B). [21]
The mischief that arises from confounding the two branches into one doctrine of double jeopardy is that it restricts the application of the provision in the subsequent prosecution arena where it is most needed. In my view we have ended up with the wrong rule for subsequent prosecutions in order to avoid undesired results on the multiple punishment front. The same phenomenon has occurred in federal double jeopardy jurisprudence. As Justice White put it in his separate concurring and dissenting opinion in Dixon: To focus on the statutory elements of a crime makes sense where cumulative punishment is at stake, for there the aim is simply to uncover legislative intent.... But ... adherence to legislative will has very little to do with the important interests advanced by double jeopardy safeguards against successive prosecutions. The central purpose of the Double Jeopardy Clause being to protect against vexatious multiple prosecutions, these interests go well beyond the prevention of unauthorized punishment. 509 U.S. at 735, 113 S.Ct. 2849, 125 L.Ed.2d 556 (emphasis and citations omitted). The problem of mixing multiple punishment and subsequent prosecution is highlighted by a single act that violates multiple statutes or, in violating a single statute, injures multiple victims. Under current law, everyone seems to agree that it must be possible to charge a person who kills two people with two murders. The term same offense cannot refer simply to the same statutory crime, or it would be unconstitutional to prosecute the same person for two murders committed at different times and places. But in order to reach the conclusion that we have two different crimes, we must look at the facts of the two crimes, and not only the statutes they offend. On the other hand, if the offense is solely the actions of the accused, it would be impossible to impose a greater punishment for murdering two victims by the same act, for example burning down a house and killing two inhabitants. [22] Take Timothy McVeigh, who by a single act murdered 168 victims in the federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995. If that occurred in this state could prosecutors charge and try McVeigh 168 times, notwithstanding multiple acquittals, until they obtain a conviction because the actual evidence of the death of a victim would be different in each case? We must also consider the possibility of a conviction in one of the earlier trials, but on a lesser included offense or resulting in a lesser sentence than the death penalty. Can the prosecution keep pursuing McVeigh until it obtains the death penalty even after multiple trials do not produce that result? I cite the McVeigh hypothetical to dramatize the point. However, the same issue arises in more commonplace scenarios with multiple victims. Should a driver accused of reckless homicide by running a red light face four separate prosecutions because there were three passengers and a driver in the car the driver hit? The actual evidence test would presumably permit all of these reprosecutions because the element of the crimea victimcould be supplied by different evidence in each case. Collateral estoppel as a nonconstitutional doctrine can bar some reprosecutions. However, I do not think persistent prosecution of the same act should be a constitutional result, and, as Griffin v. State, 717 N.E.2d 73 (Ind.1999), also decided today, demonstrates, collateral estoppel imposes only minimal restrictions on reprosecution. Because collateral estoppel is derived principally from civil litigation and is grounded in doctrines of judicial economy and fairness, its rules do not take into consideration the important concerns that underlie both Article I, Section 14 and the Fifth Amendment. [23] These include the onerous toll that is exacted by even a successful defense and a historically deep rooted apprehension that the king should not be permitted to pursue a citizen repeatedly. This is substantially the same problem that was presented in Ashe v. Swenson, 397 U.S. 436, 90 S.Ct. 1189, 25 L.Ed.2d 469 (1970), where a substantial majority of the United States Supreme Court held that collateral estoppel is constitutionally grounded in the Fifth Amendment Double Jeopardy Clause. In Ashe, the Fifth Amendment was held to bar repeated prosecutions based on different victims whom the defendant allegedly robbed at the same poker game. Id. at 447, 90 S.Ct. 1189, 25 L.Ed.2d 469. It seems to me that Dixon, by retreating to Blockburger and rejecting any difference between multiple punishments and subsequent prosecutions, also implicitly rejects Ashe as a matter of federal constitutional law. 509 U.S. at 704-05, 113 S.Ct. 2849, 125 L.Ed.2d 556. Indiana cases decided after Ashe but before Dixon applied Ashe to find a bar to the use of evidence of facts necessarily decided in a prior trial. See, e.g., Kuchel v. State, 570 N.E.2d 910, 916 (Ind.1991) (citing Little v. State, 501 N.E.2d 412, 415 (Ind.1986)). A few speak of barring the reintroduction or relitigation of facts already established in the first trial. See, e.g., Boles v. State, 595 N.E.2d 272, 274 (Ind.Ct.App.1992). These Indiana authorities find collateral estoppel notions to be constitutionally based, as Ashe clearly implied. But these cases deal, at least explicitly, only with the federal constitution and do not mention the Indiana Double Jeopardy Clause. Unless they are also found to be grounded in the state constitution, Dixon seems to leave these notions without constitutional footing. The Ashe result, as followed in Kuchel, Little and other Indiana cases, is essentially the double jeopardy doctrine that I believe should be followed under the state constitution. For subsequent prosecutions, I would follow the same conduct analysis that was adopted in Grady, 495 U.S. at 508, 110 S.Ct. 2084, 109 L.Ed.2d 548, for federal double jeopardy law in the subsequent prosecution context. This is in most cases more or less the same thing as the same facts from earlier Indiana cases. The same conduct test is supported by at least some Indiana authority. For example, Clem v. State, 42 Ind. 420 (1873), which is no more isolated than several other opinions in the erratic history of double jeopardy in this State described in the majority's opinion. Cf. 717 N.E.2d at 45, 48 (citing the following cases employing analysis of both statutory elements and the conduct of the defendant: Wininger v. State, 13 Ind. 540, 541 (1859)) ([t]he question would be, is the one act included in the other?); Durke, 204 Ind. at 370, 183 N.E. at 97 (describing the identity of the offense test as whether the second charge was for the identical act as the first). [24] It is also the test embraced by Thompson although applying only common law prohibitions against multiple punishment. 259 Ind. at 592, 290 N.E.2d at 727 (facts giving rise to the various offenses must be independently supportable, separate and distinct). Grady held that mere comparison of the statutory elements was insufficient for subsequent prosecutions. Double jeopardy, in addition to requiring a comparison of the statutes, proscribed any subsequent prosecution in which the government, to establish an essential element of an offense charged in that prosecution, will prove conduct that constitutes an offense for which the defendant has already been prosecuted. 495 U.S. at 521, 110 S.Ct. 2084, 109 L.Ed.2d 548 (footnote omitted). Grady survived for only three years, however, and was rejected by Dixon in favor of an apparent return to the same elements test of Blockburger. See Dixon, 509 U.S. at 712, 113 S.Ct. 2849, 125 L.Ed.2d 556. Among the reasons offered by Justice Scalia, writing for a five-justice majority in overruling Grady, was an asserted need for doctrinal consistency between the multiple punishment and subsequent prosecution lines. If a different methodology applied to subsequent prosecutions, the phrase same offense would have more than one meaning depending on the context. Id. at 704, 113 S.Ct. 2849, 125 L.Ed.2d 556. I agree that it seems anomalous to find two different standards in the same constitutional provision depending on the context. Rather than attempt to reconcile the two under the Indiana Constitution, I would resolve multiple punishment issues by reference to the common law and statutes and remain with the Grady same conduct test for subsequent prosecutions. Indeed, as already noted, Justice Scalia in Kurth Ranch, just one year after Dixon, seemed to agree that only subsequent prosecutions trigger double jeopardy concerns. 511 U.S. at 798, 114 S.Ct. 1937, 128 L.Ed.2d 767. Although Grady is no longer the law under the federal Double Jeopardy Clause, I generally agree with the views of Justices Souter, Stevens, White, and Blackmun, who defended Grady in Dixon. See id. at 743-763, 113 S.Ct. 2849, 125 L.Ed.2d 556 (opinion of Souter, J., concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part). [25] Some analysis beyond the raw statutory elements will always be required in the subsequent prosecution context. Indeed Dixon itself seems to confirm this. [26] In sum, I believe the answer to the constitutional claims raised here is not adoption of a uniform test in the name of doctrinal consistency. Rather it is to recognize that punishment arising out of a single trial does not present a double jeopardy issue. Indeed, as noted earlier, the concern in Indiana cases going back to the rules announced in Elder and quoted in Kokenes is clearly whether a second prosecution may be pursued, not whether two crimes may be charged and convictions result in the same proceeding. [27] As a final note, I do not believe the subsequent prosecution issue can be adequately handled by other constitutional provisions. The Due Process Clause of the federal constitution has also been suggested as a bar to subsequent prosecutions for the same act. See Akhil Reed Amar, Double Jeopardy Law Made Simple, 106 YALE L.J. 1807 (1997). Although at some point repetitive prosecution may run afoul of the Due Process Clause, at least under current precedent, subsequent prosecutions for essentially the same action have been permitted to go forward without mention of due process as Elder and other cases cited in Ashe demonstrate. Moreover, due process gives little guidance to when enough is enough. Rather, invoked as a bar to subsequent prosecution, it seems akin to Justice Stewart's famous test for obscenity: we must know it when we see it. See Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184, 197, 84 S.Ct. 1676, 12 L.Ed.2d 793 (1964) (Stewart, J., concurring). Because we have a specific constitutional provision addressing precisely this issue, I would apply it according to its terms and forego reliance on judicially fashioned remedies under the much more general Due Process Clause.