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Court Opinions ›› Garrett v. United States (1985)
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
No. 83-1842 1985.SCT.2348 , 471 U.S. 773, 105 S. Ct. 2407, 85 L. Ed. 2d 764, 53 U.S.L.W. 4629 June 3, 1985 GARRETT v. UNITED STATES CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT. In March 1981, petitioner was charged in a multicount indictment in the Western District of Washington for his role in the off-loading and landing of marihuana from a "mother ship" at a Washington location on specified days in October 1979 and August 1980. He pleaded guilty to one count of importation of marihuana and was sentenced to five years' imprisonment and a $15,000 fine. The remaining counts were dismissed without prejudice to the Government's right to prosecute petitioner on any other offenses he might have committed. Thereafter, in July 1981, petitioner was indicted in the Northern District of Florida on several drug counts, including a count for engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise (CCE) from January 1976 to July 1981 in violation of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970, 21 U. S. C. § 848. The District Court denied petitioner's pretrial motion to dismiss the CCE charge on the asserted ground that it encompassed the Washington importation operation in violation of the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment. At trial, evidence underlying petitioner's prior conviction was introduced to prove one of three predicate offenses that must be shown to make out a CCE violation, and petitioner was convicted on the CCE count and on other counts. He was sentenced to 40 years' imprisonment and a $100,000 fine on the CCE count, the prison term being concurrent with the prison terms on the other counts but consecutive to the prison term from the Washington conviction. Rejecting petitioner's contention that his Washington conviction barred the subsequent CCE prosecution in Florida, the Court of Appeals held that the Washington offense and the CCE offense were not the same under the Double Jeopardy Clause, and hence that successive prosecutions and cumulative sentences for these offenses were permissible.
1. The language, structure, and legislative history of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 show that Congress intended the CCE offense to be a separate offense that is punishable in addition to, and not as a substitute for, the predicate offenses. It would be illogical for Congress to intend that a choice be made between the predicate offenses and the CCE offense in pursuing major drug dealers. 2. It did not violate the Double Jeopardy Clause to prosecute the CCE offense after the prior conviction for one of the predicate offenses. The CCE offense is not the "same" offense as one or more of its predicate offenses within the meaning of that Clause. [...] 3. The Double Jeopardy Clause does not bar the cumulative punishments. The presumption when Congress creates two distinct defenses, as it did here, is that it intended to permit cumulative sentences. To disallow cumulative sentences would have the anomalous effect in many cases of converting into ceilings the large fines provided by 21 U. S. C. § 848 to deprive big-time drug dealers of their enormous profits. Logic, as well as the legislative history, supports the conclusion that Congress intended separate punishments for the underlying substantive predicate offenses and for the CCE offense.
Where the same conduct violates two statutory provisions, the first step in the double jeopardy analysis is to determine whether the legislature -- in this case Congress -- intended that each violation be a separate offense. If Congress intended that there be only one offense -- that is, a defendant could be convicted under either statutory provision for a single act, but not under both -- there would be no statutory authorization for a subsequent prosecution after conviction of one of the two provisions, and that would end the double jeopardy analysis.
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Congress was seeking to add a new enforcement tool to the substantive drug offenses already available to prosecutors. During the debate on the Poff amendment [for the Comprehensive Drug Abuse, Prevention and Control Act of 1970], for example, Representative Fascell stated: "I see no reason to treat a drug trafficker any less harshly than an organized crime racketeer. Their acts are equally heinous, the consequences equally severe, and their punishment equally justified." Representative Weicker stated: "The penalty structure has been designed to accommodate all types of drug offenders, from the casual drug user and experimenter to the organized crime syndicates engaged in unlawful transportation and distribution of illicit drugs."
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