Court Opinion

ID: 9428221
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:23:11.124374+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:12.332128
License: Public Domain

Justice Stewart,
with whom Justice Marshall and Justice Stevens join, concurring in the judgment.
In Whalen v. United States, 445 U. S. 684, 688, the Court said that “the question whether punishments imposed by a *345court after a defendant’s conviction upon criminal charges are unconstitutionally multiple cannot be resolved without determining what punishments the Legislative Branch has authorized.”
But that is a far cry from what the Court says today: “[T]he question of what punishments are constitutionally permissible is not different from the question of what punishments the Legislative Branch intended to be imposed. Where Congress intended, as it did here, to impose multiple punishments, imposition of such sentences does not violate the Con-sitution.” Ante, at 344. These statements are supported by neither precedent nor reasoning and are unnecessary to reach the Court’s conclusion.
No matter how clearly it spoke, Congress could not constitutionally provide for cumulative punishments unless each statutory offense required proof of a fact that the other did not, under the criterion of Blockburger v. United States, 284 U. S. 299.
Since Congress has created two offenses here, and since each requires proof of a fact that the other does not, I concur in the judgment.