Abbate v. United States

Abbate v. United States, 359 U.S. 187 (1959), is a decision of the U.S. Supreme Court. The decision held that the double jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution does not prohibit the prosecution of a conspiracy in federal court under federal law when that same conspiracy has already resulted in a conviction in state court under state law.[1]

Abbate v. United States
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued October 22, 1958 Decided March 30, 1959
Full case name	Abbate v. United States
Citations	359 U.S. 187 (more) 79 S. Ct. 666; 3 L. Ed. 2d 729; 1959 U.S. LEXIS 1264
Case history
Prior	247 F.2d 410 (5th Cir. 1957); cert. granted, 355 U.S. 902 (1957).
Holding
The double jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution does not prohibit the prosecution of a conspiracy in federal court under federal law when that same conspiracy has already resulted in a conviction in state court under state law.
Court membership
Chief Justice Earl Warren Associate Justices Hugo Black · Felix Frankfurter William O. Douglas · Tom C. Clark John M. Harlan II · William J. Brennan Jr. Charles E. Whittaker · Potter Stewart
Case opinions
Majority	Brennan, joined by Frankfurter, Clark, Harlan, Whittaker, Stewart
Concurrence	Brennan
Dissent	Black, joined by Warren, Douglas
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. V

Background

Abbate was part of a conspiracy to blow up multiple facilities owned by the Southern Bell Telephone Company. He was convicted in Illinois under a state law making it a crime to conspire to destroy the property of another and sentenced to three months of imprisonment. Thereafter, Abbate was indicted in federal district court for a violation of federal law stemming from the same conspiracy.

Decision

The question presented in this case had already been decided by the Supreme Court in United States v. Lanza. Abbate asked that the Court overrule its prior decision, which the Court declined to do. The Court reasoned that overruling Lanza would result in serious and undesirable consequences. Particularly, the state conviction here resulted in only three months' imprisonment, while the federal conviction made up to five years of imprisonment available. The Court deemed this potential disparity to be problematic. The only way to ensure that federal law enforcement interests would be vindicated under such a regime would be to displace state power to prosecute actions that also constitute federal crimes, which would be a massive shift in the balance of criminal power as between the states and the federal government.

Justice Brennan wrote separately to address an additional argument that the government had presented but that was unnecessary to the resolution of the case. The government contended that the Double Jeopardy Clause should not be construed to bar separate prosecutions for the same acts when those prosecutions are based on different evidence and vindicate different interests. Brennan rejected this argument, noting that it could lead to harassment of defendants by empowering the government to prosecute the same people over and over again using different statutes that protect different interests.

The dissenters argued for reversal, relying on two arguments. First, they observed that most civilized countries recognized that a conviction elsewhere barred a conviction in their own jurisdiction. Second, they argued that the Double Jeopardy Clause was intended to represent a national policy against allowing the federal government to prosecute someone who had already been prosecuted in another court for an offense stemming from his actions.

Facts

This case was decided the same day as Bartkus v. Illinois, a case with similar facts except the order of the convictions was reversed: the state conviction followed the federal conviction. The Supreme Court likewise did not find a double jeopardy violation.

This case is also a rare example of the majority opinion's author writing a separate opinion concurring in his own majority opinion.

References

1. Abbate v. United States, 359 U.S. 187 (1959).

External links

• Text of Abbate v. United States, 359 U.S. 187 (1959) is available from:  CourtListener  Google Scholar  Justia  Library of Congress