Court Opinion

ID: 9430234
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:29:17.547544+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:23.802164
License: Public Domain

Justice Brennan,
with whom Justice Marshall joins, dissenting.
I concur wholeheartedly in Justice Marshall’s dissent. I write separately only to clarify my views on the role that “different interests” should play in determining whether two prosecutions are “for the same offence” within the meaning of the Double Jeopardy Clause.
In Abbate v. United States, 359 U. S. 187 (1959), in addition to arguing that the dual sovereignty doctrine permitted successive state and federal prosecutions, the Federal Government also urged that the federal prosecution was not barred because the two prosecutions were not “for the same offense.” The Government’s theory was that, because the federal and state statutes involved had divergent specific purposes — the federal law to protect communications and the state law to protect private property — and thus promoted different “interests,” the prosecutions were really for different offenses.
I rejected this argument in a separate opinion. Id., at 196-201. My concern was that “this reasoning would apply equally if each of two successive federal prosecutions based on the same acts was brought under a different federal statute, and each statute was designed to protect a different federal interest.” Id., at 197 (emphasis in original). That result I found clearly barred by the Fifth Amendment.*
*95I adhere to the position I took in Abbate, that the different purposes or interests served by specific statutes cannot justify an exception to our established double jeopardy law. However, I read Justice Marshall’s dissent to use “interest” analysis in another context. He employs it to demonstrate the qualitative difference in the general nature of federal and state interests and the qualitative similarity in the nature of States’ interest. Justice Marshall’s use of this interest analysis furthers, rather than undermines, the purposes of the Double Jeopardy Clause. Based on this understanding, I join Justice Marshall’s dissent.

 I illustrated how radical and pernicious a revision in existing double jeopardy jurisprudence the Government’s theory might work by referring to In re Nielsen, 131 U. S. 176 (1889). Abbate v. United States, 359 U. S., at 201. In Nielsen, the defendant, a Mormon with more than one wife, had been convicted of violating two separate congressional statutes that applied to the Territory of Utah in two successive prosecutions. In the first prosecution he was tried for and convicted of cohabiting with more *95than one woman, in the second he was tried for and convicted of adultery. The Court correctly held that the second prosecution had unconstitutionally placed the defendant twice in jeopardy for the same offense. Under the rule the Government proposed in Abbate, however, the mere difference between the interests in prohibiting multiple sexual partners and in proscribing extramarital sexual relationships would have permitted successive prosecutions.