Opinion ID: 2532479
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: whether tapper's conviction for touching merges with his conviction for sexual battery.

Text: ¶ 29. Double-jeopardy claims also are questions of law and are reviewed de novo. Brown v. State, 731 So.2d 595, 598 (Miss.1999); see also Deeds v. State, 27 So.3d 1135, 1139 (Miss.2009). ¶ 30. Tapper asserts, citing Friley v. State, 879 So.2d 1031, 1035 (Miss. 2004), that under Mississippi law, touching of a child for lustful purposes is a lesser-included offense of sexual battery with penetration, and therefore, the two offenses merge, making Tapper's conviction for count two of touching upon C.C. violative of the Double Jeopardy Clause of the United States Constitution. The State points out that, although this Court, in Friley, did find under the particular circumstances that molestation is a lesser-included offense of sexual battery and that [i]t is impossible to penetrate without touching, Friley, 879 So.2d at 1035, Tapper ignores the fact that it is possible to commit an unlawful touching without committing sexual battery. Sexual battery requires penetration, while unlawful touching does not. In today's case, the sexual-battery counts concern events separate from the unlawful-touching counts. There was testimony that Tapper had touched C.C. with both his finger and his penis, and evidence was presented showing penetration of C.C. As previously stated by this Court: Double jeopardy protects criminal defendants from being exposed to more than one prosecution for the same offense. It does not protect a defendant against different prosecutions for different offenses. Hughes v. State, 401 So.2d 1100 (Miss.1981). It is not a legal analog to some sort of blue light special where a defendant, by having the foresight or good fortune to commit the same crime or different crimes in close connection to each other, gets two or more offenses for the price of one. Wright v. State, 540 So.2d 1, 5 (Miss.1989); see also Ball v. State, 437 So.2d 423, 425 (Miss.1983) (Temporal proximity does not generate a juridical union of separate and distinct criminal acts, nor does the presence of a common nucleus of operative facts.). The evidence presented in today's case does not support Tapper's argument that his convictions for touching merge with his convictions for sexual battery. Thus, this issue is without merit.