Caseflicks

Supreme Court of the United States • 1985

Heath v. Alabama

474 U.S. 82 | 106 S. Ct. 433 | 88 L. Ed. 2d 387 | 1985 U.S. LEXIS 143 | 54 U.S.L.W. 4016

Full access

Unlock the video and quiz

The written brief is free to read below. Subscribe to watch the video explainer and take the quiz.

Create an account Log in

Takeaway

In short, Heath held that separate States are separate sovereigns under the Double Jeopardy Clause, allowing each State to prosecute the same conduct under its own criminal laws.

Background

Larry Gene Heath hired two men to kidnap and kill his wife, Rebecca Heath, who lived with him in Alabama. Heath met the men in Georgia, led them back to his Alabama home, gave them access to the house and car, and left. The men abducted Rebecca from the home; her body was later found in the couple's car in Georgia. The evidence was consistent with the murder having occurred in Georgia.

Georgia and Alabama investigators cooperated. Georgia arrested Heath, obtained his confession, and indicted him for malice murder. Although Georgia initially sought the death penalty, Heath pleaded guilty in exchange for a life sentence.

Three months later, Alabama indicted Heath for the capital offense of murder during a kidnapping. Heath argued that his Georgia conviction barred the Alabama prosecution under the Double Jeopardy Clause and that Alabama lacked jurisdiction because the killing occurred in Georgia. The Alabama trial court rejected both arguments, and a jury convicted Heath and recommended death. The trial judge imposed that sentence. The Alabama appellate courts affirmed, holding that Georgia and Alabama were separate sovereigns for double-jeopardy purposes. The Supreme Court granted review on the double-jeopardy question.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether the Supreme Court should decide Heath's claim that Alabama lacked jurisdiction to prosecute him because the murder occurred in Georgia.

Holding

No. The Court declined to consider the jurisdictional claim because Heath did not present it to the Alabama Supreme Court and raised it in the Supreme Court for the first time.

Reasoning

The Court's grant of certiorari was limited to the double-jeopardy question. Although Heath had raised a jurisdictional objection in the Alabama trial court, he did not include that claim in his petition to the Alabama Supreme Court; instead, he identified only the federal double-jeopardy issue.

The Court applied its longstanding practice of refusing to consider claims not pressed or passed upon in the state court of last resort. Whether characterized as a jurisdictional bar or as a strong presumption against review, that practice counseled against deciding Heath's late-raised challenge to Alabama's authority to prosecute.

Issue #2

Whether the Double Jeopardy Clause bars Alabama from prosecuting Heath for murder during a kidnapping after Georgia convicted him of malice murder arising from the same homicide.

Holding

No. Georgia and Alabama are separate sovereigns, so each may prosecute conduct that violates its own criminal law even if the offenses would otherwise be the same for double-jeopardy purposes.

Reasoning

The Court assumed that Georgia's malice-murder charge and Alabama's murder-during-a-kidnapping charge would count as the same offense if a single State had successively brought both prosecutions. Under Brown v. Ohio, a greater offense and its lesser-included offense ordinarily cannot be separately prosecuted by the same sovereign.

But the Double Jeopardy Clause prohibits a second prosecution only for the same "offence." Under the dual-sovereignty doctrine, one act can constitute two distinct offenses when it violates the laws of two governments that derive their power to punish from independent sources.

A prosecuting entity is a separate sovereign when its authority to enforce criminal law comes from its own ultimate source of power. States are separate from the Federal Government because each State's prosecutorial authority arises from its inherent sovereignty, rather than from a federal delegation. The Court concluded that States are equally separate from one another: each retained independent sovereign power to define crimes and punish violations within its authority.

Prior decisions involving federal territories and municipalities supported this source-of-authority test. Those entities were not separate sovereigns from the Federal Government or a State because their prosecutorial authority came from the same ultimate sovereign source. By contrast, Alabama and Georgia each exercised independent authority preserved to the States.

The Court rejected Heath's proposed balancing test, under which a second sovereign would need to show that a separate prosecution was necessary to vindicate an unserved interest. That approach conflicts with the doctrine's premise that a State's interest in enforcing its own criminal law cannot be satisfied by another State's enforcement of its own law. Once two governments are separate sovereigns, the particular circumstances and overlap of their interests do not alter the double-jeopardy result.

Nielsen v. Oregon did not compel a different outcome. The Court read Nielsen narrowly as involving unusual concurrent jurisdiction over a boundary river granted by Congress and a prosecution for conduct specifically authorized by the adjoining State. It did not decide the double-jeopardy consequences of successive prosecutions by two States exercising independent sovereign authority.

Dissents

Justice Brennan

Reasoning

Justice Brennan joined Justice Marshall's dissent but wrote separately to clarify the proper role of governmental interests in double-jeopardy analysis. He rejected the proposition that two prosecutions become different offenses merely because two statutes serve different immediate purposes; that reasoning could improperly permit successive prosecutions by one sovereign under different statutes for the same conduct.

He understood Justice Marshall to use interest analysis differently. Marshall compared the qualitatively distinct sovereign interests served by federal and state governments with the substantially similar general interests served by two States. In Brennan's view, that comparison supported limiting the dual-sovereignty doctrine rather than creating an exception based on differing statutory purposes.

Justice Marshall

Reasoning

Justice Marshall argued that the dual-sovereignty doctrine was developed to accommodate the distinctive, complementary interests of the Federal Government and the States. In that setting, one act may implicate both national and local concerns, and allowing either sovereign's prosecution to preclude the other could frustrate important interests assigned to each under the constitutional structure.

Those justifications did not, in his view, extend to successive prosecutions by two States. Unlike the Federal Government and a State, two States exercise the same general kind of sovereign authority over local peace and order. Although they may adopt different policies, the State that prosecutes first can still vindicate the basic sovereign interests entrusted to state governments, while the defendant's interest in avoiding a second prosecution receives far less justification for being overridden.

Justice Marshall read Nielsen v. Oregon as recognizing that, where two States possess concurrent jurisdiction over an offense, the first State's judgment should bar a second prosecution by the other. He viewed the majority's extension of dual sovereignty to state-state prosecutions as unsupported by the doctrine's purposes and as allowing a race to the courthouse to determine whether constitutional protection applies.

He also maintained that this case was fundamentally unfair because Georgia and Alabama allegedly cooperated not merely to investigate the crime but to obtain Heath's execution after Georgia accepted his guilty plea for life imprisonment. In his view, the Constitution should prohibit two governments from combining to produce a result that neither could constitutionally achieve through repeated prosecutions on its own, whether the defect is understood as double jeopardy or as a denial of due process.