Opinion ID: 712236
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Traditional Double Jeopardy Principles

Text: 59 The Fifth Amendment guarantee against double jeopardy has been said to consist of three separate constitutional protections. It protects against a second prosecution for the same offense after acquittal. It protects against a second prosecution for the same offense after conviction. And it protects against multiple punishments for the same offense. North Carolina v. Pearce, 395 U.S. 711, 717, 89 S.Ct. 2072, 2076, 23 L.Ed.2d 656 (1969) (footnotes omitted). These protections guard against two evils: successive prosecutions and impermissibly multiplicitous punishments. Regarding the successive prosecution aspect, the Supreme Court has said: The basis of the Fifth Amendment protection against double jeopardy is that a person shall not be harassed by successive trials; that an accused shall not have to marshal the resources and energies necessary for this defense more than once for the same alleged criminal acts. Abbate v. United States, 359 U.S. 187, 198-99, 79 S.Ct. 666, 673, 3 L.Ed.2d 729 (1959). 60 In this case the government first obtained a conviction against Philip May, then sought forfeiture of his property on the basis of the conduct for which Mr. May had already been convicted. In its motion for summary judgment, the undisputed facts on which the government based its case included the facts on which Mr. May had been convicted, plus the facts establishing a relationship between the defendant property and the illegal activity. Aplt.App. vol. I, at 4-7. Had this been a criminal forfeiture proceeding brought under 21 U.S.C. § 853, the double jeopardy problem would be apparent. The forfeiture proceeding would have been a second jeopardy, resulting in a second punishment, for the same offense. 61 However, the traditional view of civil forfeitures exempted them from double jeopardy analysis because the proceeding, being civil, could not be a jeopardy, and because forfeiture of the defendant property was not a punishment. 11 Mr. May urges that this view can no longer be maintained in the wake of the Supreme Court's decisions in United States v. Halper, 490 U.S. 435, 109 S.Ct. 1892, 104 L.Ed.2d 487 (1989), Austin v. United States, 509 U.S. 602, 113 S.Ct. 2801, 125 L.Ed.2d 488 (1993), and Department of Revenue v. Kurth Ranch, --- U.S. ----, 114 S.Ct. 1937, 128 L.Ed.2d 767 (1994). We agree. 62