386
Opinion of the Court
help show Felix's state of mind, he was not prosecuted in the Missouri trial for any offense other than the Missouri attempt offense with which he was charged. Thus, the Court of Appeals holding must rest on an assumption that if the Government offers in evidence in one prosecution acts of misconduct that might ultimately be charged as criminal offenses in a second prosecution, the latter prosecution is barred under the Double Jeopardy Clause.
But such an assumption is not supportable; our precedents hold that a mere overlap in proof between two prosecutions does not establish a double jeopardy violation. The Court of Appeals relied on the above-quoted language from our opinion in Grady v. Corbin, 495 U. S., at 521, in reaching its result. But we think that this is an extravagant reading of Grady, which disclaimed any intention of adopting a " 'same evidence' " test. Id., at 521, and n. 12; accord, Gavieres v. United States, 220 U. S. 338 (1911). Our decision two Terms ago in Dowling v. United States, 493 U. S. 342 (1990), drives home this point.
In that case, Dowling was charged with bank robbery. To help prove his identity at trial, the Government introduced evidence under Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b) concerning the unrelated robbery of a woman named Vena Henry. She testified that she had been robbed by a man wearing a knitted mask similar to the one used by the bank robber, and that she had been able to identify the intruder as Dowling after unmasking him during a struggle. We upheld the introduction of Henry's testimony at the bank robbery trial, despite the fact that Dowling had previously been acquitted of the Henry charges. The primary ruling of that case was our conclusion that the collateral-estoppel component of the Double Jeopardy Clause offered Dowling no protection despite his earlier acquittal, because the relevance of evidence offered under Rule 404(b) was governed by a lower standard of proof than that required for a conviction. See 493 U. S., at 348-349 (citing Huddleston v. United States, 485 U. S. 681,
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