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The Water Cooler
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Stop Ignoring Double Jeopardy
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<blockquote data-quote="Dave70968" data-source="post: 3181102" data-attributes="member: 13624"><p>First to file, though the feds could no doubt assert superiority. I agree with the idea of not wasting resources on duplicate convictions--for instance, Timothy McVeigh never stood trial on his 168 counts of murder, just on 19 federal counts. Given the sentence he got from the feds, anything in state court would have been a waste of taxpayer dollars.</p><p></p><p>A more insidious case, though, is where the defendant is acquitted, then tried again for the same acts under a different sovereign. The officers who beat Rodney King went through that--acquitted in state court, tried (and convicted) on federal charges. Regardless of your opinion of the outcome of that one (I'll refrain from mine, as it's not germane), it seems to fly directly in contravention to the idea of a prohibition on double jeopardy. The history of the dual-sovereignty doctrine is an ugly one as well, as the article points out (though there's no question that the feds <em>did</em> have the authority to prosecute on alcohol charges, given the Eighteenth Amendment).</p><p></p><p>It swings the other way, too--states often criminalize things that the feds criminalized first. State-level bans on convicted felons having guns generally arose after the federal prohibition, and state-level bans on having unregistered NFA items <em>by definition</em> followed the federal law--they couldn't have been enacted prior to the enactment of the NFA because that's what created the registration in the first place. It's nothing more than formalized charge-stacking.</p><p></p><p>Interestingly, charging multiple offenses--including lesser included offenses--under the same sovereign for the same overt acts <em>do</em> fall within the ambit of the Double Jeopardy Clause. In order to convict on two different crimes, the two crimes must each have at least one element that the other lacks. Lesser included offenses can both be charged, but are an either-or proposition for conviction; conviction on the greater offense includes all of the elements of the lesser, plus something additional, foreclosing the option of convicting on the lesser <em>in addition to</em> the greater, and convicting on the lesser and acquitting the greater closes the door on the greater forever.</p><p></p><p>But let two charges be brought by different sovereigns, even with identical elements (very common for drug charges), and the High Court (pun fully intended) thinks that's just fine.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Dave70968, post: 3181102, member: 13624"] First to file, though the feds could no doubt assert superiority. I agree with the idea of not wasting resources on duplicate convictions--for instance, Timothy McVeigh never stood trial on his 168 counts of murder, just on 19 federal counts. Given the sentence he got from the feds, anything in state court would have been a waste of taxpayer dollars. A more insidious case, though, is where the defendant is acquitted, then tried again for the same acts under a different sovereign. The officers who beat Rodney King went through that--acquitted in state court, tried (and convicted) on federal charges. Regardless of your opinion of the outcome of that one (I'll refrain from mine, as it's not germane), it seems to fly directly in contravention to the idea of a prohibition on double jeopardy. The history of the dual-sovereignty doctrine is an ugly one as well, as the article points out (though there's no question that the feds [I]did[/I] have the authority to prosecute on alcohol charges, given the Eighteenth Amendment). It swings the other way, too--states often criminalize things that the feds criminalized first. State-level bans on convicted felons having guns generally arose after the federal prohibition, and state-level bans on having unregistered NFA items [I]by definition[/I] followed the federal law--they couldn't have been enacted prior to the enactment of the NFA because that's what created the registration in the first place. It's nothing more than formalized charge-stacking. Interestingly, charging multiple offenses--including lesser included offenses--under the same sovereign for the same overt acts [I]do[/I] fall within the ambit of the Double Jeopardy Clause. In order to convict on two different crimes, the two crimes must each have at least one element that the other lacks. Lesser included offenses can both be charged, but are an either-or proposition for conviction; conviction on the greater offense includes all of the elements of the lesser, plus something additional, foreclosing the option of convicting on the lesser [I]in addition to[/I] the greater, and convicting on the lesser and acquitting the greater closes the door on the greater forever. But let two charges be brought by different sovereigns, even with identical elements (very common for drug charges), and the High Court (pun fully intended) thinks that's just fine. [/QUOTE]
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