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The former FBI director, Robert Mueller III, photographed in 2013 at a forum in New York.
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Andrew Burton / Getty Images
The former FBI director, Robert Mueller III, photographed in 2013 at a forum in New York.
Andrew Burton / Getty Images
The double criminality clause of the Constitution states that a person can not be prosecuted twice for the same crime.
But in fact, for 160 years, the Supreme Court has ruled that separate rulers – state and federal governments – can do just that, because each sovereign government has separate laws and interests.
The Supreme Court could now be ready to overturn this longstanding rule – and this could have implications for the ongoing investigation by President Trump and his associates led by Special Advocate Robert Mueller and their links with Russia.
Indeed, a decision prohibiting such lawsuits could allow some of the people already convicted of the crime. Mueller's investigation of it was unhurt if President Trump forgave them, which he openly flirted with what he did.
When Do Double Chases Occur?
Duplicate lawsuits are mo It often happens in high profile cases, often cases of civil rights, where one has the feeling that justice has not been done.
In 1992, for example, riots broke out in Los Angeles after a jury composed mostly of whites in the surrounding area. The suburb of Simi Valley has acquitted four policemen of the beating of a black man named Rodney King
The day after the verdict rendered by the court, Attorney General William Barr said that "nothing in the state process binds us to the federal government" and, in fact, several months later, federal prosecutors have laid charges against the same police officers for violating King's civil rights.
A more mixed-breed federal jury in Los Angeles then sentenced two of the officers.
What is the case before the Supreme Court?
The case before the court on Thursday is far more mundane than the case of King's police brutality. In 2015, seven years after Terance Gamble's conviction for robbery in Alabama, he was arrested by the police for a traffic violation.
When the cops found a handgun and two bags of marijuana in the car, they accused him of violation. an Alabama law prohibiting convicted criminals from owning a firearm.
Gamble pleaded guilty to the charges against him and was sentenced to one year in prison, the remainder of his sentence being suspended. His subsequent conviction for violating an almost identical federal law, however, added three more years of imprisonment.
Gamble appealed the second conviction, claiming that it violated the US Constitution's prohibition of double jeopardy for the same crime. But the lower courts have held that under precedents established by the Supreme Court, state and federal governments, as separate sovereigns, are allowed to bring such successive prosecutions.
The Gamble case is now before the Supreme Court, where two judges Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Clarence Thomas – have suggested that it might be time to revisit the doctrine of separate sovereignty.
A hassle-free card for Trump's associates?
The case drew attention because of President Trump's remarks that he could possibly forgive his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, and other associates of Trump who were – or could be – convicted in Mueller's lawsuits.
Presidential pardon, it should be noted, only apply to federal crimes. Thus, under the current legislation, a state like New York, for example, could sue Manafort for the same crimes, but using the laws of that state.
If the Supreme Court was to prohibit duplicate prosecutions, "it is feared that a president the United States can forgive an individual for all federal offenses "and that this would indeed be a" forgiveness for everything, "said George Washington University law professor, Stephen Saltzburg, who served as the Deputy Attorney General in the Reagan and Bush administrations.
These concerns, he noted, range from the president to local governors or prosecutors. They could "offer nice gifts to their friends or family by rushing to sue them for certain crimes," said Saltzburg, obtaining minimum penalties.
It would "cut" the federal government's power to sue. same behavior, especially in corruption cases.
But Daniel Richman, a professor at Columbia Law School, who previously headed the appeals section at the US Attorney 's Office in Manhattan, does not worry much about the Manafort case, or any other. other similar cases. [19659033] Wisconsin legislators vote in favor of a power limitation of the new democratic governor “/>
