Double Jeopardy Ban (H 7432)

We supported legislation which would, in our view, give full meaning to the constitutional protection against "double jeopardy," which was designed to bar a person from being tried more than once for the same crime.

This ban, enshrined in both our state and federal Constitutions, is intended to protect people from the danger of multiple prosecutions by overzealous prosecutors. Yet, since 1922, the U.S. Supreme Court has undermined this clause with an exception that allows state and federal prosecutors to bring separate charges for the same alleged crime. As a result, people can be prosecuted twice for the same offense — so long as the prosecutors are from separate “sovereigns.”   

This “dual-sovereignty” loophole should be closed, and the Supreme Court’s questionable logic that having state and federal prosecutors bring the same case against the same person for the same offense in two different jurisdictions somehow makes it permissible should be rejected.