Opinion ID: 596393
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Relevancy of Garrett

Text: 33 Although this court has stated that Garrett governs complex statutory crimes implicating double jeopardy issues, it does not definitively resolve the issue that Reed raises. In Garrett, the Court held that a CCE conviction may be based on predicate acts involving substantive crimes for which the defendant already has been prosecuted. This holding was based on the dissimilarity of the elements required to prove a CCE versus those required to prove a substantive crime. Garrett does not address the issue of a CCE prosecution based on the predicate act of drug conspiracy, an act similar to CCE, involving many of the same elements as CCE. The Garrett court specifically noted that a CCE offense is not the same as a substantive offense because a CCE offense, unlike a substantive drug offense, requires proof that the defendant acted in concert with five other people. Id. at 786, 105 S.Ct. at 2415. Quite similarly, a conspiracy conviction also requires proof of an agreement, unlike a conviction for a substantive offense. In fact, the Supreme Court expressly noted the conceptual closeness of sections 846 (conspiracy to distribute) and 848 (CCE) in Jeffers v. United States, 432 U.S. 137, 145 n. 11, 97 S.Ct. 2207, 2213 n. 11, 53 L.Ed.2d 168 (1977). Because of this closeness between conspiracies and CCEs, we must evaluate further whether double jeopardy bars a CCE prosecution based upon a previous drug-conspiracy conviction.