Cite as: 509 U. S. 688 (1993)
Opinion of Souter, J.
adultery requires proof that one of the parties is married, while cohabitation does not require such proof. Although the Court agreed that adultery contains such an element, the Court found that this element was irrelevant under its successive prosecution rule, because sexual intercourse is the "essential and principal ingredient of adultery." Id., at 189. In other words, what may not be successively prosecuted is the act constituting the "principal ingredient" of the second offense, if that act has already been the subject of the prior prosecution. It is beside the point that the subsequent offense is defined to include, in addition to that act, some further element uncommon to the first offense (where the first offense also includes an element not shared by the second). Thus, as the Court states its holding, the cohabitation conviction "was a good bar" because "the material part of the adultery charged [i. e., intercourse] was comprised within the unlawful cohabitation of which the petitioner was already convicted." Id., at 187 (emphasis supplied); see also ibid. (sexual intercourse "was the integral part of the adultery charged in the second indictment") (emphasis supplied).
One final aspect of the Nielsen opinion deserves attention. After rejecting a Blockburger test for successive prosecutions, the Court then proceeded to discuss the familiar rule that conviction of a greater offense bars subsequent prosecution for a lesser included offense. This discussion misleads the majority into thinking that Nielsen does nothing more than apply that familiar rule, which is, of course, a corollary to the Blockburger test. See ante, at 705. But Nielsen's discussion did not proceed on the ground that the Court believed adultery to be a lesser included offense of cohabitation (and thus its later prosecution barred for that reason); on the contrary, the Court had just finished explaining that marriage must be proven for adultery, but not for cohabitation, which precluded finding adultery to be a lesser included offense of cohabitation. The discussion of the lesser included offense rule is apposite for the different reason that once the
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