United States v. Dixon, 509 U.S. 688, 11 (1993)

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698

UNITED STATES v. DIXON

Opinion of Scalia, J.

judge incorporated the statutory drug offense into his release order.

In this situation, in which the contempt sanction is imposed for violating the order through commission of the incorporated drug offense, the later attempt to prosecute Dixon for the drug offense resembles the situation that produced our judgment of double jeopardy in Harris v. Oklahoma, 433 U. S. 682 (1977) (per curiam). There we held that a subsequent prosecution for robbery with a firearm was barred by the Double Jeopardy Clause, because the defendant had already been tried for felony murder based on the same underlying felony. We have described our terse per curiam in Harris as standing for the proposition that, for double jeopardy purposes, "the crime generally described as felony murder" is not "a separate offense distinct from its various elements." Illinois v. Vitale, 447 U. S. 410, 420-421 (1980). Accord, Whalen v. United States, 445 U. S. 684, 694 (1980). So too here, the "crime" of violating a condition of release cannot be abstracted from the "element" of the violated condition. The Dixon court order incorporated the entire governing criminal code in the same manner as the Harris felony-murder statute incorporated the several enumerated felonies. Here, as in Harris, the underlying substantive criminal offense is "a species of lesser-included offense." 2 Vitale, supra, at 420. Accord, Whalen, supra.

2 In order for the same analysis to be applicable to violation of a statute criminalizing disobedience of a lawful police order, as The Chief Justice's dissent on this point hypothesizes, see post, at 719, the statute must embrace police "orders" that "command" the noncommission of crimes— for instance, "Don't shoot that man!" It seems to us unlikely that a "police order" statute would be interpreted in this fashion, rather than as addressing new obligations imposed by lawful order of police (for example, the obligation to remain behind police lines, or to heed a command to "Freeze!"). If, however, such a statute were interpreted to cover police orders forbidding crimes, the Double Jeopardy Clause would as a practical matter bar subsequent prosecution only for relatively minor offenses, such

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