Cite as: 509 U. S. 688 (1993)
Opinion of Souter, J.
tion whether double jeopardy applies where a defendant is first convicted of a continuing offense and then indicted for some single act that the continuing offense includes. The Court answered this question by quoting with approval an observation found in Morey v. Commonwealth, 108 Mass. 433 (1871), that "[a] conviction of being a common seller of intoxicating liquors has been held to bar a prosecution for a single sale of such liquors within the same time." Id., at 435. The Court then conceded that quoting this observation from the Morey opinion would not alone suffice to decide the case before it, since the Government was relying on a further statement from Morey, this one expressing the Morey court's reason for holding that a prior conviction on a charge of "lewdly and lasciviously associating" with an unmarried woman was no bar to a subsequent prosecution for adultery: "[A]lthough proof of the same acts of unlawful intercourse was introduced on both trials[,] . . . the evidence required to support the two indictments was not the same." 131 U. S., at 188. The Morey court's reasoning behind this holding was that "[a] single act may be an offence against two statutes; and if each statute requires proof of an additional fact which the other does not, an acquittal or conviction under either statute does not exempt the defendant from prosecution and punishment under the other." 108 Mass., at 434, quoted in Nielsen, supra, at 188. Morey's rule governing subsequent prosecution, in other words, was what we know today as the Block-burger elements test.
The Nielsen Court held the Blockburger test inapplicable for two reasons. First, it distinguished Morey by noting that "[t]he crime of loose and lascivious association . . . did not necessarily imply sexual intercourse," 131 U. S., at 188, while the continuous offense involved in Nielsen, cohabitation under the polygamy statute, required proof of "[l]iving together as man and wife," which "[o]f course" implies "sexual intercourse," even though intercourse need not have been pleaded or proven under a cohabitation indictment, id., at
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