HEATH v. ALABAMA 474 U.S. 82 (1985)

By the same act, Heath committed crimes in two states. Men whom he hired kidnapped his wife in one state and killed her in another. He pleaded guilty in one state to avoid capital punishment, and he received a life sentence. However, the other state tried him for essentially the same offense, convicted him, and sentenced him to death. Heath claimed that the second trial exposed him to double jeopardy in violation of the clause of the Fifth Amendment, applicable to the states via the incorporation doctrine.

In many cases, the Court had held that a state and the federal government may prosecute the same act if it was a crime under the laws of each. Never had the Court previously decided whether two states could prosecute the same act.

Justice sandra day o'connor, for a 7–2 Court, declared that although the Fifth Amendment's double-jeopardy clause protects against successive prosecutions for the same act, if that act breached the laws of two states, it constituted distinct offenses for double-jeopardy purposes. The "dual sovereignty" rule in such cases meant that each affronted sovereign had criminal jurisdiction. The states are as sovereign toward each other as each is toward the United States. In a sense, the case created no new law because the double-jeopardy clause had never previously barred different jurisdictions from trying the same person for the same act. Nevertheless, Justices william j. brennan and thurgood marshall sharply dissented.

Leonard W. Levy
(1992)