396
Opinion of the Court
both successive punishment and successive prosecution," United States v. Dixon, 509 U. S. 688, 704 (1993) (citing North Carolina v. Pearce, 395 U. S. 711 (1969)), and that "the Constitution was designed as much to prevent the criminal from being twice punished for the same offence as from being twice tried for it," Ex parte Lange, 18 Wall. 163, 173 (1874). See also Schiro v. Farley, 510 U. S. 222, 229-230 (1994); United States v. Halper, 490 U. S. 435, 440, 451, n. 10 (1989). Significantly, the language of the Double Jeopardy Clause protects against more than the actual imposition of two punishments for the same offense; by its terms, it protects a criminal defendant from being twice put in jeopardy for such punishment. See Price v. Georgia, 398 U. S. 323, 326 (1970). That is, the Double Jeopardy Clause "prohibits merely punishing twice, or attempting a second time to punish criminally, for the same offense." Helvering v. Mitchell, 303 U. S. 391, 399 (1938) (emphasis added).
Petitioner clearly was neither prosecuted for nor convicted
of the cocaine offenses during the first criminal proceeding. The offense to which petitioner pleaded guilty and for which he was sentenced in 1992 was attempted possession of marijuana with intent to distribute it, whereas the crimes charged in the instant indictment are conspiracy to import cocaine and attempted importation of the same. Under Blockburger v. United States, 284 U. S. 299, 304 (1932), "where the same act or transaction constitutes a violation of two distinct statutory provisions, the test to be applied to determine whether there are two offenses or only one, is whether each provision requires proof of a fact which the other does not." See also Dixon, supra, at 696 (emphasizing that the same inquiry generally applies "[i]n both the multiple punishment and multiple prosecution contexts"). Under the Blockburger test, the indictment in this case did not charge the same offense to which petitioner formerly had pleaded guilty.
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