United States v. Felix, 503 U.S. 378, 14 (1992)

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

Opinion of the Court

offense itself. These are separate offenses for double jeopardy purposes. The majority in the Court of Appeals below essentially read Grady as substituting for the "same offence" language of the Double Jeopardy Clause a test based on whether the two prosecutions involve the "same conduct." The dissenting judge in the Court of Appeals thought that this was an oversimplification, pointing to the fact that the word "conduct" in the previously quoted sentence from Grady is modified by the phrase " 'that constitutes an offense for which the defendant has already been prosecuted.' " 926 F. 2d, at 1532 (Anderson, J., dissenting) (quoting Grady v. Corbin, 495 U. S., at 521). The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in United States v. Calderone, 917 F. 2d 717 (1990), upheld a claim of double jeopardy by a divided vote, with each judge on the panel writing an opinion interpreting the crucial language from Grady differently. That court decided that the "conduct" at issue in a conspiracy prosecution is not the agreement itself, but the conduct from which the Government asks the jury to infer that there was an agreement. 917 F. 2d, at 721. Judge Newman filed a concurring opinion, concluding that Grady bars a subsequent prosecution only when previously prosecuted conduct will be used to establish the entirety of an element of the second crime. See 917 F. 2d, at 723-725 (Newman, J., concurring). Other Courts of Appeals, as described in more detail in n. 2, supra, have rejected double jeopardy claims in similar situations. It appears that while Grady eschewed a "same evidence" test and Garrett rejected a " 'single transaction' " test, Garrett v. United States, supra, at 790, the line between those tests and the "same conduct" language of Grady is not easy to discern.

We think it best not to enmesh in such subtleties the established doctrine that a conspiracy to commit a crime is a separate offense from the crime itself. Thus, in this case, the conspiracy charge against Felix was an offense distinct from any crime for which he had been previously prosecuted, and

391

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