Opinion ID: 606126
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Current Law

Text: 47 While the Double Jeopardy Clause is simply worded, the language same offence within it has long defied definition. Double jeopardy concerns arise in two situations: where a criminal defendant is prosecuted more than once for unlawful acts occurring during the same real world event, and where, within a single prosecution, a defendant is convicted under separate statutes which have many similar elements. We refer to the first of these situations as successive prosecution and the second as cumulative punishment. The constitutional concerns underlying each category of double jeopardy cases are distinct and the judiciary has consequently developed two somewhat different analyses with which to review them. 48 In the comparatively settled area of cumulative punishment, the primary double jeopardy question is whether Congress intended that a criminal defendant be sentenced independently for violation of each of two or more statutes. The assumption underlying the [analysis] is that Congress ordinarily does not intend to punish the same offense under two different statutes. Whalen v. United States, 445 U.S. 684, 691-2, 100 S.Ct. 1432, 1437-8. Under the test articulated in Blockburger v. United States, 284 U.S. 299, 52 S.Ct. 180, 76 L.Ed. 306 (1932), we are to conclude that Congress intended cumulative punishments whenever each of two offenses charged in a single or in successive indictments requires proof of a statutory element which the other does not. 14 Once we reach this conclusion, our review comes to an end. Missouri v. Hunter, 459 U.S. at 368-69, 103 S.Ct. at 679. In these cases, the Double Jeopardy Clause ensures only that the court does not misinterpret legislative intent by imposing multiple punishments where Congress intended only one. 49 The precise reach of the Double Jeopardy Clause in successive prosecution cases has not been clearly stated, despite a wealth of recent cases and commentary. In Grady v. Corbin, 495 U.S. 508, 110 S.Ct. 2084, 109 L.Ed.2d 548 (1990), the Supreme Court emphasized that the danger inherent in successive prosecutions is not misinterpretation of legislative intent but rather the possibility of an unconstitutional exercise of prosecutorial authority. Writing for the majority in Grady, Justice Brennan noted: 50 Successive prosecutions ... whether following acquittals or convictions, raise concerns that extend beyond merely the possibility of an enhanced sentence: 'The underlying idea ... is that the State with all its resources and power should not be able to make repeated attempts to convict an individual for an alleged offense, thereby subjecting him to embarrassment, expense and ordeal and compelling him to live in a continuing state of anxiety and insecurity....' Green v. United States, 355 U.S. 184, 187, 78 S.Ct. 221, 223, 2 L.Ed.2d 199 (1957). Multiple prosecutions also give the State an opportunity to rehearse its presentation of proof, thus increasing the risk of an erroneous conviction.... 495 U.S. at 518, 110 S.Ct. at 2091-92 (citations omitted). 51 Prior to Grady, the Supreme Court had acknowledged two specific sets of circumstances in which this danger was sufficiently grave that the Double Jeopardy Clause mandated something more than the Blockburger analysis of legislative intent. First, in Brown v. Ohio, 432 U.S. 161, 97 S.Ct. 2221, 53 L.Ed.2d 187 (1977), the Court held that the Double Jeopardy Clause forbids both successive prosecution and cumulative punishment of a crime and its lesser included offenses. 15 Second, where a second prosecution requires relitigation of facts necessarily resolved in the defendant's favor in the first, we invalidate it under the common law doctrine of collateral estoppel which, we infer from the Supreme Court's decision in Ashe v. Swenson, 397 U.S. 436, 90 S.Ct. 1189, 25 L.Ed.2d 469 (1970), hangs on the constitutional hook of the Double Jeopardy Clause. 52 In Grady v. Corbin, supra, the Court took Ashe and Brown as evidence of a wider class of cases in which double jeopardy analysis must extend beyond Blockburger. The Court recognized that, in addition to serving as a safeguard against judicial misinterpretation of legislative intent, the Double Jeopardy Clause guards against cases in which the government crosses over from enforcing its laws to wielding its prosecutorial authority as an inappropriate weapon against an individual. Under Grady, judicial review of a double jeopardy challenge to successive prosecutions begins with the Blockburger same element test. If the charges brought in successive prosecutions satisfy Blockburger, we are instructed to conduct a less-structured review to determine whether the same offense, in a constitutional sense, was the subject of both prosecutions. In this second stage, the Double Jeopardy Clause bars 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. at 2093. In other words, the government is constitutionally barred from prosecuting an individual a second time where the temptation to harass a criminal defendant through a second bite at the prosecutorial apple is likely to have been an element of prosecutorial decisionmaking: where acts held unlawful and prosecuted under one or more statutes are subsequently reprosecuted under the same or alternative statutes. 53 Determining ex post whether the same conduct was prosecuted in two proceedings can be a delicate task. In Johnson v. Howard, 963 F.2d 342 (11th Cir.1992), the most recent application of the Grady analysis in this circuit, we concluded that the Double Jeopardy Clause did not bar prosecution of an individual for possession of a firearm by one convicted of a crime of violence after he had pled guilty to possession of a firearm in a vehicle without a permit. Both charges arose out of a single incident and arrest. We applied the Grady test to the defendant's status as an unlicensed possessor of a weapon and his status as a convicted criminal. These states of being were the conduct made unlawful by the state; possession of a weapon by defendant Johnson was not unlawful but for either his lack of a license or his prior conviction. Because the conduct addressed by the trial differed from the conduct covered by the guilty plea, we held that the two did not offend the Double Jeopardy Clause. The government has legitimate interests in licensing weapons and in addressing the heightened danger represented by a convicted felon's possession of a weapon. The Double Jeopardy Clause does not, therefore, prohibit the government from accepting a plea to further the former interest and conducting a trial to punish an individual for creating the latter danger. 54 Since 1990, the Supreme Court has limited Grady to situations in which the test it prescribes is most likely to identify instances of prosecutorial overreaching. This limitation acknowledges the high cost of burdening law enforcement with a constitutional challenge whenever all of the charges against a criminal defendant cannot be handled in a single proceeding. Where the Grady analysis is not likely to be predictive of improper governmental motives it has therefore been disregarded. 55 For example, in cases involving drug conspiracies or continuing criminal enterprises, cases generally supported by myriad predicate offenses, the sheer number of violations of the laws, the number of defendants, and the number of items of evidence may be impossible to handle in a single trip to the courthouse. In these cases of multilayered conduct, the Grady approach to double jeopardy may unduly hamper law enforcement without successfully isolating cases of harassment. It may, in addition, thwart the legislature's intention in enacting complex crime laws, which is to punish both substantive crimes and agreements to commit them. Accordingly, Grady has been held inapplicable to complex crime cases. Garrett v. United States, supra; United States v. Gonzalez, 921 F.2d 1530 (11th Cir.), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 112 S.Ct. 178, 116 L.Ed.2d 140 (1991). 56 The Supreme Court also recently held that a second prosecution does not violate the Double Jeopardy Clause merely because the same or similar evidence was presented in a first prosecution. United States v. Felix, --- U.S. ----, 112 S.Ct. 1377, 118 L.Ed.2d 25 (1992). Indeed, the Grady Court itself rejected the notion that successive prosecutions employing the same evidence would necessarily violate the Double Jeopardy Clause. 495 U.S. at 508, 110 S.Ct. at 2084. Extending double jeopardy protection this far would, for example, nullify the accommodation between the exigencies of law enforcement and the rights of the accused represented in Fed.R.Evid. 404(b). 57 Given the limits placed on Grady since it was decided, we doubt that a literal application of its same conduct language is appropriate. See Felix, supra; Johnson, supra; United States v. Calderone, 917 F.2d 717 (2d Cir.1990) (finding of double jeopardy bar in broad reading of Grady vacated and remanded by Supreme Court in light of Felix;  --- U.S. ----, 112 S.Ct. 1657, 118 L.Ed.2d 381 (1992)); United States v. Rivera-Feliciano, 930 F.2d 951 (1st Cir.1991), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 112 S.Ct. 1676, 118 L.Ed.2d 394 (1992) (certiorari denied where appellate court found no double jeopardy bar in a narrow application of Grady). Having reviewed numerous cases in an attempt to uncover a discrete set of situations in which the Double Jeopardy Clause bars a second prosecution, we conclude that no one characteristic of that second prosecution controls. 58 The Double Jeopardy Clause neither prohibits successive prosecution of an individual for distinct unlawful acts within the same criminal transaction nor invalidates all uses of the same evidence in successive prosecutions. It does not forbid prosecuting an individual for two unlawful acts with similar statutory elements. The Double Jeopardy Clause prohibits twice placing an individual in jeopardy for the same offense against the sovereignty of the government. Whatever the strength of Grady 's actual language under current law, its purpose retains validity. Mindful of the refinements suggested by Felix, Garrett, and other cases, we focus on that purpose: to identify likely instances of prosecutorial harassment by defining when activities prosecuted under separate statutes improperly subject a criminal defendant to the worry and expense of a second prosecution for an affront to the peace and safety of the land for which he has already been prosecuted. 59 We believe that all of the facts and circumstances of a second prosecution should inform our identification of Fifth Amendment offenses. See United States v. Maza, 983 F.2d at 1011 (discussing fact-dependent element of double jeopardy analysis). The evidence presented in a second prosecution is not irrelevant to the analysis, and the elements of the offenses charged in successive prosecutions also play a role in our review. Prior to Grady, the Supreme Court endorsed a flexible approach to Double Jeopardy issues, see, e.g., Illinois v. Somerville, 410 U.S. 458, 93 S.Ct. 1066, 35 L.Ed.2d 425 (1973), and we do not believe that intervening developments in the law have undermined the wisdom of such flexibility. The absence of a specific set of factors which will control every case merely requires that we exercise judgment, the task assigned to us by Article III of the Constitution.