Cite as: 503 U. S. 378 (1992)
Opinion of the Court
Grady v. Corbin, supra, at 519 (citing Brown v. Ohio, 432 U. S. 161 (1977); Harris v. Oklahoma, 433 U. S. 682 (1977)). Although the traffic offenses involved in Grady were not technically lesser included offenses of the homicide and assault charges, we analogized the case to the situation we had previously confronted in Illinois v. Vitale, 447 U. S. 410 (1980). There, the State sought to prosecute the defendant for involuntary manslaughter after a car accident. We stated, in dicta, that if the State found it necessary to rely on a previous failure to reduce speed conviction to sustain the manslaughter charge, the Double Jeopardy Clause might protect the defendant. See id., at 420. Despite the fact that neither offense was technically a lesser included offense of the other, we observed that, in such a circumstance, the failure to slow offense might be viewed as a "species of lesser-included offense." Ibid. In Grady, the State sought to rely on the two previous traffic offense convictions to sustain the homicide and assault charges, presenting the situation about which we had speculated in Vitale. In concluding that the Double Jeopardy Clause barred the subsequent homicide and assault prosecutions, we simply adopted the suggestion we had previously made in dicta in Vitale. Grady v. Corbin, supra, at 521.
But long antedating any of these cases, and not questioned in any of them, is the rule that a substantive crime and a conspiracy to commit that crime are not the "same offence" for double jeopardy purposes.
For example, in United States v. Bayer, 331 U. S. 532 (1947), a military officer had been convicted in court-martial proceedings of discrediting the military service by accepting payments in return for transferring soldiers to noncombat units. We held that his subsequent prosecution in federal court on charges of conspiring to defraud the Government of his faithful services was not barred by the Double Jeopardy Clause, despite the fact that it was based on the same underlying incidents, because the "essence" of a conspiracy offense
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