For 170 years the US Supreme Court has upheld the view that if you are charged with federal crime?….
That does NOT keep you from being charged under state law for something similar….
Arguments on this just went before the Supreme’s ,and from the looks of things?
The judges up there aren’t gonna rule any different then others have in the past….
This is important….
State Attorney Generals in New York, Washington DC and Maryland have had their people working with Mueller’s people and US Attorney’s on some of the Mueller cases including the Cohen and Manafort cases….
State charges cannot be pardoned by US President’s……
The U.S. Supreme Court appeared unlikely Thursday to change its long-standing rule that putting someone on trial more than once for the same crime does not violate the Constitution’s protection against double jeopardy.
That outcome — keeping existing rules in place — would potentially be a blow to Paul Manafort, who faces prison time for violating federal fraud laws. A presidential pardon could keep him out of federal prison, but it would not free him from being prosecuted on similar state charges — unless the Supreme Court changes the rule. But that seemed did not seem possible after Thursday’s oral argument before the justices.
Neither Manafort’s case nor the work of Special Counsel Robert Mueller came up in the courtroom argument.
The Fifth Amendment provides that no person shall be “twice put in jeopardy of life or limb” for the same offense. But for nearly two centuries, the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that being prosecuted for the same crime once by a state and again in federal court, or the other way around, doesn’t violate the provision because the states and the federal government are “separate sovereigns.”
The lawyer for an Alabama man, Terance Gamble, urged the justices to overturn those earlier decisions. Convicted of robbery in 2008, Gamble was pulled over seven years later for a traffic violation. Police found a handgun in his car, and he was prosecuted under Alabama’s law barring felons from possessing firearms. The local U.S. attorney then charged him with violating a similar federal law. Because of the added federal conviction, Gamble’s prison sentence was extended by nearly three years.
“This is a 170-year-old rule that close to 30 justices have voted for,” said Justice Elena Kagan. “You’re asking us to throw it out because we think we can do better?”…
image…nytimes