Heath v. Alabama
Encyclopedia
Heath v. Alabama, 474 U.S. 82 (1985), is a case in which the United States Supreme Court
ruled that, because of the doctrine of dual sovereignty (the concept that the United States and each state
possess sovereignty
– a consequence of federalism
), the double jeopardy
clause of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution does not prohibit one state from prosecuting and punishing somebody for an act of which he had already been convicted of and sentenced for in another state.
This decision is one of several that holds that the Fifth Amendment does not forbid the U.S. federal government and a state government, or the governments of more than one state, from prosecuting the same individual separately for the same illegal act.
The clause "nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb" means that the government cannot re-prosecute somebody for a crime of which he or she has been found "not guilty"; likewise, the government cannot appeal against a verdict of acquittal. However, the first ten amendments to the Constitution, known as the Bill of Rights, were originally interpreted as binding only on the Federal government; for example, the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of religion, expressly begins with the words, "Congress
shall make no law . . . ." It was not until the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, the first section of which says, in part, "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws" that any serious consideration was given to the proposition that the Bill of Rights is binding on the states
.
Since then, the decisions of the United States Supreme Court
have gradually evolved so as to include most state
actions within the scope of the Bill of Rights. In Benton v. Maryland
, 395 U.S. 784 (1969), the Supreme Court held that the Fifth Amendment prohibition against double jeopardy
applies to the states. Nevertheless, each U.S. state
has long been considered to have its own sovereignty, which it shares with the U.S. federal government; thus, the question of whether more than one state can punish the same individual for the same set of actions was left open.
, Larry Gene Heath, traveled from Alabama
to Georgia
, where he met with two other individuals whom he had hired to kill his wife Rebecca. They returned with him to his house and, after he left the scene, they killed his wife. He was arrested later that year and, on February 10, 1982, pled
guilty in a Georgia
court to the crime of murder, and was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Subsequently, a grand jury
in Alabama
, his state of residence, indicted him for the crime of murder during a kidnapping, and he entered a plea of "autrefois convict and former jeopardy under the Alabama and United States Constitutions," by which he stated that he was not eligible to be punished in Alabama because a Georgia court had already convicted and sentenced him for the same crime, and that the crime had, in fact, not taken place in Alabama. The prosecutor
argued, however, that because the defendant's wife had been kidnapped in Alabama, the murder "may be punished" there. On January 12, 1983, a jury in the Alabama court convicted
Heath of "murder during a kidnapping in the first degree," a capital offense, He was sentenced to death, and the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed this decision on direct appeal. The Alabama Supreme Court, after granting certiorari, affirmed the decision of the lower court as well.
The United States Supreme Court
then granted certiorari
to determine whether the conviction of Heath violated the precedent that had been set by an earlier case, Brown v. Ohio, 432 U.S. 161 (1977), in which the Court had held that one cannot be punished consecutively for two different offenses if the proof of both offenses is identical.
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.
, in a minority opinion, sought to distinguish between the long-held principle that the Fifth Amendment does not prohibit the U.S. federal government and the state governments from separately prosecuting the same individual for the same illegal act, and the majority holding that two separate state governments can do likewise.
In his dissent, he explains that the "dual sovereignty" exception to the double jeopardy clause
was designed specifically "to accommodate complementary state and federal concerns within our system of concurrent territorial jurisdictions."
Furthermore, even if the reasoning of the majority was correct, the dual sovereignty doctrine must "not [be used to] legitimate the collusion between Georgia and Alabama in this case to ensure that petitioner is executed for his crime." Specifically, in this case the defendant plead guilty in Georgia for the express purpose of avoiding the death penalty; then, he was put on trial in Alabama by a jury in a town where the crime was notorious, and where 75 of 82 prospective jurors were aware that Heath had already plead guilty in Georgia. The judge, rather than exclude the jurors who knew that the defendant had already plead guilty, simply asked them if they would be able to "put aside their knowledge of the prior guilty plea in order to give petitioner a fair trial in Alabama." It strains credibility that the jurors could remain impartial in spite of their knowledge of the guilty plea. Furthermore, given that the jurors had this knowledge, defense counsel "could do little but attempt to elicit information from prosecution witnesses tending to show that the crime was committed exclusively in Georgia",; any argument tending to show actual innocence would likely be disbelieved by the jury, in spite of the fact that the guilty plea in Georgia was part of a plea bargain
, and some defendants, to avoid execution, may plead guilty without actually being guilty.
Justice Marshall also comments that it would, without question, have been unconstitutional if the State of Georgia had decided to re-prosecute Heath on a capital charge because of its dissatisfaction with the life sentence that he had already received. "The only difference between this case and such a hypothetical volte-face
by Georgia is that here Alabama, not Georgia, was offended by the notion that petitioner might not forfeit his life in punishment for his crime. The only reason the Court gives for permitting Alabama to go forward is that Georgia and Alabama are separate sovereigns." He then goes on to criticize the majority for its "restrictive" interpretation of the word "offence."
The only reasons why there needs to be a dual-sovereignty exception to the Fifth Amendment prohibition of double jeopardy, argues Marshall, are that
and that
No such "interests" need to be protected when two different states are seeking to prosecute the same offense, and so the underlying reasons behind the "dual-sovereignty" exception to the prohibition against double jeopardy
do not apply. Indeed, in 1909 the Supreme Court had held that in case of an incident that occurs on territory subject to "'the one first acquiring jurisdiction of the person may prosecute the offense, and its judgment is a finality in both States, so that one convicted or acquitted in the courts of the one State cannot be prosecuted for the same offense in the courts of the other' Nielsen v. Oregon, 212 U.S. 315, 320 (1909)," (The majority decision of the Court stated that the holding of Nielsen v. Oregon was applicable only to a unique set of circumstances. In Nielsen v. Oregon, two States jointly had jurisdiction over the river that separates them from each other, and one state had prosecuted somebody for an act that was specifically permitted under the laws of the other, and the Court reversed the conviction.)
Finally, Justice Marshall points out that "Even where the power of two sovereigns to pursue separate prosecutions for the same crime has been undisputed, this Court has barred both governments from combining to do what each could not constitutionally do on its own." In this case, the prosecutions in Alabama and Georgia were so inextricably linked that it was as if they were acting together as a single governmental entity. Furthermore, the interests of justice, according to Marshall, were frustrated by having the defendant plead guilty to a crime in Georgia to avoid the death penalty, only to have the guilty plea prevent him from mounting a meaningful defense to capital charges in Alabama. For these reasons, in the interests "of fundamental fairness," Justice Marshall voted against the majority decision.
joined Justice Marshall
in his dissent, but also wrote a separate statement (in which Justice Marshall joined), in which he indicated that the "interests" mentioned by Justice Marshall, which would justify allowing Federal and State prosecutions for the same illegal act, are not of a nature that would justify any other exception to the rule that one may not be prosecuted more than once for the same offense.
on March 21, 1992.
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...
ruled that, because of the doctrine of dual sovereignty (the concept that the United States and each state
U.S. state
A U.S. state is any one of the 50 federated states of the United States of America that share sovereignty with the federal government. Because of this shared sovereignty, an American is a citizen both of the federal entity and of his or her state of domicile. Four states use the official title of...
possess sovereignty
Sovereignty
Sovereignty is the quality of having supreme, independent authority over a geographic area, such as a territory. It can be found in a power to rule and make law that rests on a political fact for which no purely legal explanation can be provided...
– a consequence of federalism
Federalism
Federalism is a political concept in which a group of members are bound together by covenant with a governing representative head. The term "federalism" is also used to describe a system of the government in which sovereignty is constitutionally divided between a central governing authority and...
), the double jeopardy
Double jeopardy
Double jeopardy is a procedural defense that forbids a defendant from being tried again on the same, or similar charges following a legitimate acquittal or conviction...
clause of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution does not prohibit one state from prosecuting and punishing somebody for an act of which he had already been convicted of and sentenced for in another state.
This decision is one of several that holds that the Fifth Amendment does not forbid the U.S. federal government and a state government, or the governments of more than one state, from prosecuting the same individual separately for the same illegal act.
Background
The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States says:No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
The clause "nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb" means that the government cannot re-prosecute somebody for a crime of which he or she has been found "not guilty"; likewise, the government cannot appeal against a verdict of acquittal. However, the first ten amendments to the Constitution, known as the Bill of Rights, were originally interpreted as binding only on the Federal government; for example, the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of religion, expressly begins with the words, "Congress
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
shall make no law . . . ." It was not until the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, the first section of which says, in part, "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws" that any serious consideration was given to the proposition that the Bill of Rights is binding on the states
U.S. state
A U.S. state is any one of the 50 federated states of the United States of America that share sovereignty with the federal government. Because of this shared sovereignty, an American is a citizen both of the federal entity and of his or her state of domicile. Four states use the official title of...
.
Since then, the decisions of the United States Supreme Court
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...
have gradually evolved so as to include most state
U.S. state
A U.S. state is any one of the 50 federated states of the United States of America that share sovereignty with the federal government. Because of this shared sovereignty, an American is a citizen both of the federal entity and of his or her state of domicile. Four states use the official title of...
actions within the scope of the Bill of Rights. In Benton v. Maryland
Benton v. Maryland
Benton v. Maryland, , is a Supreme Court of the United States decision concerning double jeopardy. Benton ruled that the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment does apply to the states. In doing so, Benton expressly overruled Palko v. Connecticut, .-Facts of the case:John Dalmer Benton was...
, 395 U.S. 784 (1969), the Supreme Court held that the Fifth Amendment prohibition against double jeopardy
Double jeopardy
Double jeopardy is a procedural defense that forbids a defendant from being tried again on the same, or similar charges following a legitimate acquittal or conviction...
applies to the states. Nevertheless, each U.S. state
U.S. state
A U.S. state is any one of the 50 federated states of the United States of America that share sovereignty with the federal government. Because of this shared sovereignty, an American is a citizen both of the federal entity and of his or her state of domicile. Four states use the official title of...
has long been considered to have its own sovereignty, which it shares with the U.S. federal government; thus, the question of whether more than one state can punish the same individual for the same set of actions was left open.
Facts and procedural history
In 1981, the defendantDefendant
A defendant or defender is any party who is required to answer the complaint of a plaintiff or pursuer in a civil lawsuit before a court, or any party who has been formally charged or accused of violating a criminal statute...
, Larry Gene Heath, traveled from Alabama
Alabama
Alabama is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Mississippi to the west. Alabama ranks 30th in total land area and ranks second in the size of its inland...
to Georgia
Georgia (U.S. state)
Georgia is a state located in the southeastern United States. It was established in 1732, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies. The state is named after King George II of Great Britain. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788...
, where he met with two other individuals whom he had hired to kill his wife Rebecca. They returned with him to his house and, after he left the scene, they killed his wife. He was arrested later that year and, on February 10, 1982, pled
Plea
In legal terms, a plea is simply an answer to a claim made by someone in a civil or criminal case under common law using the adversary system. Colloquially, a plea has come to mean the assertion by a criminal defendant at arraignment, or otherwise in response to a criminal charge, whether that...
guilty in a Georgia
Georgia (U.S. state)
Georgia is a state located in the southeastern United States. It was established in 1732, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies. The state is named after King George II of Great Britain. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788...
court to the crime of murder, and was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Subsequently, a grand jury
Grand jury
A grand jury is a type of jury that determines whether a criminal indictment will issue. Currently, only the United States retains grand juries, although some other common law jurisdictions formerly employed them, and most other jurisdictions employ some other type of preliminary hearing...
in Alabama
Alabama
Alabama is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Mississippi to the west. Alabama ranks 30th in total land area and ranks second in the size of its inland...
, his state of residence, indicted him for the crime of murder during a kidnapping, and he entered a plea of "autrefois convict and former jeopardy under the Alabama and United States Constitutions," by which he stated that he was not eligible to be punished in Alabama because a Georgia court had already convicted and sentenced him for the same crime, and that the crime had, in fact, not taken place in Alabama. The prosecutor
Prosecutor
The prosecutor is the chief legal representative of the prosecution in countries with either the common law adversarial system, or the civil law inquisitorial system...
argued, however, that because the defendant's wife had been kidnapped in Alabama, the murder "may be punished" there. On January 12, 1983, a jury in the Alabama court convicted
Conviction
In law, a conviction is the verdict that results when a court of law finds a defendant guilty of a crime.The opposite of a conviction is an acquittal . In Scotland and in the Netherlands, there can also be a verdict of "not proven", which counts as an acquittal...
Heath of "murder during a kidnapping in the first degree," a capital offense, He was sentenced to death, and the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed this decision on direct appeal. The Alabama Supreme Court, after granting certiorari, affirmed the decision of the lower court as well.
The United States Supreme Court
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...
then granted certiorari
Certiorari
Certiorari is a type of writ seeking judicial review, recognized in U.S., Roman, English, Philippine, and other law. Certiorari is the present passive infinitive of the Latin certiorare...
to determine whether the conviction of Heath violated the precedent that had been set by an earlier case, Brown v. Ohio, 432 U.S. 161 (1977), in which the Court had held that one cannot be punished consecutively for two different offenses if the proof of both offenses is identical.
The decision of the Court
Writing for a 7-2 majority, Justice O'ConnorSandra Day O'Connor
Sandra Day O'Connor is an American jurist who was the first female member of the Supreme Court of the United States. She served as an Associate Justice from 1981 until her retirement from the Court in 2006. O'Connor was appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1981...
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.
Justice Marshall's dissent
Justice MarshallThurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, serving from October 1967 until October 1991...
, in a minority opinion, sought to distinguish between the long-held principle that the Fifth Amendment does not prohibit the U.S. federal government and the state governments from separately prosecuting the same individual for the same illegal act, and the majority holding that two separate state governments can do likewise.
In his dissent, he explains that the "dual sovereignty" exception to the double jeopardy clause
Double jeopardy
Double jeopardy is a procedural defense that forbids a defendant from being tried again on the same, or similar charges following a legitimate acquittal or conviction...
was designed specifically "to accommodate complementary state and federal concerns within our system of concurrent territorial jurisdictions."
Furthermore, even if the reasoning of the majority was correct, the dual sovereignty doctrine must "not [be used to] legitimate the collusion between Georgia and Alabama in this case to ensure that petitioner is executed for his crime." Specifically, in this case the defendant plead guilty in Georgia for the express purpose of avoiding the death penalty; then, he was put on trial in Alabama by a jury in a town where the crime was notorious, and where 75 of 82 prospective jurors were aware that Heath had already plead guilty in Georgia. The judge, rather than exclude the jurors who knew that the defendant had already plead guilty, simply asked them if they would be able to "put aside their knowledge of the prior guilty plea in order to give petitioner a fair trial in Alabama." It strains credibility that the jurors could remain impartial in spite of their knowledge of the guilty plea. Furthermore, given that the jurors had this knowledge, defense counsel "could do little but attempt to elicit information from prosecution witnesses tending to show that the crime was committed exclusively in Georgia",; any argument tending to show actual innocence would likely be disbelieved by the jury, in spite of the fact that the guilty plea in Georgia was part of a plea bargain
Plea bargain
A plea bargain is an agreement in a criminal case whereby the prosecutor offers the defendant the opportunity to plead guilty, usually to a lesser charge or to the original criminal charge with a recommendation of a lighter than the maximum sentence.A plea bargain allows criminal defendants to...
, and some defendants, to avoid execution, may plead guilty without actually being guilty.
Justice Marshall also comments that it would, without question, have been unconstitutional if the State of Georgia had decided to re-prosecute Heath on a capital charge because of its dissatisfaction with the life sentence that he had already received. "The only difference between this case and such a hypothetical volte-face
Volte-face
Volte-face is a total change of position, as in policy or opinion; an about-face.The expression comes through French, from Italian voltafaccia and Portuguese volte face, composed of volta and faccia ....
by Georgia is that here Alabama, not Georgia, was offended by the notion that petitioner might not forfeit his life in punishment for his crime. The only reason the Court gives for permitting Alabama to go forward is that Georgia and Alabama are separate sovereigns." He then goes on to criticize the majority for its "restrictive" interpretation of the word "offence."
The only reasons why there needs to be a dual-sovereignty exception to the Fifth Amendment prohibition of double jeopardy, argues Marshall, are that
were a prosecution by a State, however zealously pursued, allowed to preclude further prosecution by the Federal Government for the same crime, an entire range of national interests could be frustrated
and that
Conversely, because "the States under our federal system have the principal responsibility for defining and prosecuting crimes," Abbate v. United States, supra, at 195, it would be inappropriate - in the absence of a specific congressional intent to pre-empt state action pursuant to the Supremacy Clause - to allow a federal prosecution to preclude state authorities from vindicating "the historic right and obligation of the States to maintain peace and order within their confines," Bartkus v. Illinois, supra, at 137.
No such "interests" need to be protected when two different states are seeking to prosecute the same offense, and so the underlying reasons behind the "dual-sovereignty" exception to the prohibition against double jeopardy
Double jeopardy
Double jeopardy is a procedural defense that forbids a defendant from being tried again on the same, or similar charges following a legitimate acquittal or conviction...
do not apply. Indeed, in 1909 the Supreme Court had held that in case of an incident that occurs on territory subject to "'the one first acquiring jurisdiction of the person may prosecute the offense, and its judgment is a finality in both States, so that one convicted or acquitted in the courts of the one State cannot be prosecuted for the same offense in the courts of the other' Nielsen v. Oregon, 212 U.S. 315, 320 (1909)," (The majority decision of the Court stated that the holding of Nielsen v. Oregon was applicable only to a unique set of circumstances. In Nielsen v. Oregon, two States jointly had jurisdiction over the river that separates them from each other, and one state had prosecuted somebody for an act that was specifically permitted under the laws of the other, and the Court reversed the conviction.)
Finally, Justice Marshall points out that "Even where the power of two sovereigns to pursue separate prosecutions for the same crime has been undisputed, this Court has barred both governments from combining to do what each could not constitutionally do on its own." In this case, the prosecutions in Alabama and Georgia were so inextricably linked that it was as if they were acting together as a single governmental entity. Furthermore, the interests of justice, according to Marshall, were frustrated by having the defendant plead guilty to a crime in Georgia to avoid the death penalty, only to have the guilty plea prevent him from mounting a meaningful defense to capital charges in Alabama. For these reasons, in the interests "of fundamental fairness," Justice Marshall voted against the majority decision.
Justice Brennan's dissent
Justice BrennanWilliam J. Brennan, Jr.
William Joseph Brennan, Jr. was an American jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1956 to 1990...
joined Justice Marshall
Thurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, serving from October 1967 until October 1991...
in his dissent, but also wrote a separate statement (in which Justice Marshall joined), in which he indicated that the "interests" mentioned by Justice Marshall, which would justify allowing Federal and State prosecutions for the same illegal act, are not of a nature that would justify any other exception to the rule that one may not be prosecuted more than once for the same offense.
Subsequent history
The defendant in this case subsequently filed a petition for post-conviction relief in the Alabama state court system, and for a Federal writ of habeas corpus, both of which were denied; he was executedCapital punishment
Capital punishment, the death penalty, or execution is the sentence of death upon a person by the state as a punishment for an offence. Crimes that can result in a death penalty are known as capital crimes or capital offences. The term capital originates from the Latin capitalis, literally...
on March 21, 1992.
External links
- Full text of the amendments to the Constitution of the United States of America, including the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment.
- FindLaw annotation on the Fifth Amendment
- Unofficial copy of decision at vlex.com.
- Unofficial copy of decision on resource.org.
- Unofficial text of decision on supreme.justia.com.