Witte v. United States, 515 U.S. 389, 7 (1995)

Page:   Index   Previous  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10  11  12  13  14  15  Next

Cite as: 515 U. S. 389 (1995)

Opinion of the Court

punished for the cocaine offenses because the cocaine involved in the 1990 transactions had been considered as "relevant conduct" at sentencing for the 1991 marijuana offense. The District Court dismissed the indictment in February 1993 on grounds that punishment for the indicted offenses would violate the prohibition against multiple punishments contained in the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment. App. 130-136.

The Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed. 25 F. 3d 250 (1994). Relying on our decision in Williams v. Oklahoma, 358 U. S. 576 (1959), the court held that "the use of relevant conduct to increase the punishment of a charged offense does not punish the offender for the relevant conduct." 25 F. 3d, at 258. Thus, although the sentencing court took the quantity of cocaine involved in the 1990 importation scheme into account when determining the sentence for Witte's 1991 marijuana possession offense, the Court of Appeals concluded that Witte had not been punished for the cocaine offenses in the first prosecution—and that the Double Jeopardy Clause therefore did not bar the later action. In reaching this result, the court expressly disagreed with contrary holdings in United States v. Koonce, 945 F. 2d 1145 (CA10 1991), cert. denied, 503 U. S. 994 (1992), and United States v. McCormick, 992 F. 2d 437 (CA2 1993), that when a defendant's actions are included in relevant conduct in determining the punishment under the Sentencing Guidelines for one offense, those actions may not form the basis for a later indictment without violating double jeopardy. We granted certiorari to resolve the conflict among the Circuits, 513 U. S. 1072 (1995), and now affirm.

II

The Double Jeopardy Clause provides: "[N]or shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb." U. S. Const., Amdt. 5. We have explained that "the Clause serves the function of preventing

395

Page:   Index   Previous  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10  11  12  13  14  15  Next

Last modified: October 4, 2007