United States v. Felix, 503 U.S. 378, 8 (1992)

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Cite as: 503 U. S. 378 (1992)

Opinion of the Court

closed from prosecuting these charges, because it had presented evidence of the Oklahoma drug operation at the prior trial in order to help demonstrate Felix's criminal intent with respect to the Missouri transaction.

At its root, the Double Jeopardy Clause forbids the duplicative prosecution of a defendant for the "same offence." U. S. Const., Amdt. 5; see Blockburger v. United States, 284 U. S. 299 (1932). An examination of the indictments below shows that Felix was charged in the Missouri case only with attempting to manufacture methamphetamine in Missouri, in late August 1987. App. to Pet. for Cert. 62a-63a. In the five substantive drug counts of the Oklahoma indictment that are at issue here, Felix was charged with various drug offenses that took place in Oklahoma, in June and July 1987. Id., at 55a-57a. The crimes charged in the Oklahoma indictment were related to the operation of the methamphetamine lab near Beggs, Oklahoma, in the summer of 1987, while the crime charged in the Missouri indictment dealt solely with Felix's attempt to purchase chemicals and equipment from Dwinnells in order to continue methamphetamine operations after the Beggs lab was raided. The actual crimes charged in each case were different in both time and place; there was absolutely no common conduct linking the alleged offenses. In short, none of the offenses for which Felix was prosecuted in the Oklahoma indictment is in any sense the "same offence" as the offence for which he was prosecuted in Missouri.

The Court of Appeals appears to have acknowledged as much, as it concentrated not on the actual crimes prosecuted in the separate trials, but instead on the type of evidence presented by the Government during the two trials. The court found it decisive that the Government had introduced evidence of Felix's involvement in the Oklahoma lab to help show criminal intent for purposes of the Missouri trial. But it is clear that, no matter how much evidence of the Oklahoma transactions was introduced by the Government to

385

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