Heath V. Alabama - The Decision of The Court

The Decision of The Court

Writing for a 7-2 majority, Justice O'Connor ruled that "the dual sovereignty doctrine . . . compels the conclusion that successive prosecutions by two States for the same conduct are not barred by the Double Jeopardy Clause." "The dual sovereignty doctrine," she wrote, "is founded on the common-law conception of crime as an offense against the sovereignty of the government. When a defendant in a single act violates the 'peace and dignity' of two sovereigns by breaking the laws of each, he has committed two distinct 'offences.' United States v. Lanza, 260 U.S. 377, 382, 43 S.Ct. 141, 67 L.Ed. 314 (1922)."

When somebody commits a crime against the laws of two different states, then the question of whether the states constitute two different sovereigns or just one is determined by whether the state governments "draw their authority to punish the offender from distinct sources of power." Answering the question, Justice O'Connor wrote that the "powers" of state governments "to undertake criminal prosecutions derive from separate and independent sources of power and authority originally belonging to them before admission to the Union and preserved to them by the Tenth Amendment."

The majority opinion concluded that by violating the laws of two different states, the defendant committed separate offenses against each state; for this reason, the Constitutional prohibition on prosecuting or convicting somebody "for the same offense" did not apply, and the Court affirmed the defendant's conviction.