COMMONWEALTH OF PUERTO RICO v. SANCHEZ VALLE ET AL.

CERTIORARI TO THE SUPREME COURT OF PUERTO RICO No. 15–108. Argued January 13, 2016—Decided June 9, 2016 Respondents Luis Sánchez Valle and Jaime Gómez Vázquez each sold a gun to an undercover police officer. Puerto Rican prosecutors indicted them for illegally selling firearms in violation of the Puerto Rico Arms Act of 2000. While those charges were pending, federal grand juries also indicted them, based on the same transactions, for violations of analogous U. S. gun trafficking statutes. Both defendants pleaded guilty to the federal charges and moved to dismiss the pending Commonwealth charges on double jeopardy grounds. The trial court in each case dismissed the charges, rejecting prosecutors’ arguments that Puerto Rico and the United States are separate sovereigns for double jeopardy purposes and so could bring successive prosecutions against each defendant. The Puerto Rico Court of Appeals consolidated the cases and reversed. The Supreme Court of Puerto Rico granted review and held, in line with the trial court, that Puerto Rico’s gun sale prosecutions violated the Double Jeopardy Clause. Held: The Double Jeopardy Clause bars Puerto Rico and the United States from successively prosecuting a single person for the same conduct under equivalent criminal laws. Pp. 5–18. (a) Ordinarily, a person cannot be prosecuted twice for the same offense. But under the dual-sovereignty doctrine, the Double Jeopardy Clause does not bar successive prosecutions if they are brought by separate sovereigns. See, e.g., United States v. Lanza, 260 U. S. 377, 382. Yet “sovereignty” in this context does not bear its ordinary meaning. This Court does not examine the extent of control that one prosecuting entity wields over the other, the degree to which an entity exercises self-governance, or a government’s more particular ability to enact and enforce its own criminal laws. Rather, the test hinges 2 PUERTO RICO v. SANCHEZ VALLE Syllabus on a single criterion: the “ultimate source” of the power undergirding the respective prosecutions. United States v. Wheeler, 435 U. S. 313, 320. If two entities derive their power to punish from independent sources, then they may bring successive prosecutions. Conversely, if those entities draw their power from the same ultimate source, then they may not. Under that approach, the States are separate sovereigns from the Federal Government and from one another. Because States rely on “authority originally belonging to them before admission to the Union and preserved to them by the Tenth Amendment,” state prosecutions have their roots in an “inherent sovereignty” unconnected to the U. S. Congress. Heath v. Alabama, 474 U. S. 82, 89. For similar reasons, Indian tribes also count as separate sovereigns. A tribe’s power to punish pre-existed the Union, and so a tribal prosecution, like a State’s, is “attributable in no way to any delegation . . . of federal authority.” Wheeler, 435 U. S., at 328. Conversely, a municipality cannot count as a sovereign distinct from a State, because it receives its power, in the first instance, from the State. See, e.g., Waller v. Florida, 397 U. S. 387, 395. And most pertinent here, this Court concluded in the early 20th century that U. S. territories—including an earlier incarnation of Puerto Rico itself—are not sovereigns distinct from the United States. Grafton v. United States, 206 U. S. 333. The Court reasoned that “the territorial and federal laws [were] creations emanating from the same sovereignty,” Puerto Rico v. Shell Co. (P. R.), Ltd., 302 U. S. 253, 264, and so federal and territorial prosecutors do not derive their powers from independent sources of authority. Pp. 5–11.

To be Continued: at this Link.

NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued. The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader. See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337. 
COMMONWEALTH OF PUERTO RICO v. SANCHEZ VALLE ET AL.