388
Opinion of the Court
justification—relied upon language from our Grady opinion to support its conclusion. There is no doubt that the conspiracy charge presents a more difficult question than the substantive drug offenses dealt with in Part II above, because with respect to it there exists more than a mere overlap in evidence. Of the nine overt acts supporting the conspiracy charge against Felix, two were based on the conduct for which he had been previously prosecuted in Missouri. But we hold that because of long established precedent in this area, which was not questioned in Grady, Felix's claim of double jeopardy fails.
Felix contends, and the Court of Appeals agreed, that language from Grady bars the conspiracy prosecution. There we said that the Double Jeopardy Clause bars a prosecution where the Government, "to establish an essential element of an offense charged in that prosecution, will prove conduct that constitutes an offense for which the defendant has already been prosecuted." 495 U. S., at 521. Taken out of context, and read literally, this language supports the defense of double jeopardy. But we decline to read the language so expansively, because of the context in which Grady arose and because of difficulties which have already arisen in its interpretation.
Grady involved a defendant who had driven his car across the median line of a two-way highway and struck an oncoming car, killing one of the occupants. The State charged the defendant with driving while intoxicated and with failing to keep right of the median, and the defendant pleaded guilty to those two traffic violations. Two months later, the State prosecuted the defendant on homicide and assault charges arising from the accident, and the defendant argued that this was a violation of his rights under the Double Jeopardy Clause. In our decision, we recognized our previous holdings that the traditional Blockburger test governing double jeopardy claims bars a subsequent prosecution if one of the two offenses is a lesser included offense of the other. See
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