Barrett v. United States · ¶47
This deployment of the consecutive-sentence mandate misunderstands today's inquiry. The argument attempts to make Blockburger purely about sentences—so that an instruction to run sentences consecutively rather than concurrently makes clear Congress's intent to overcome the presumption. But Blockburger addresses the permissibility of multiple convictions, not just multiple sentences. “The assumption underlying the Blockburger rule is that Congress ordinarily does not intend to punish the same offense under two different statutes,” where “punishment” means “a criminal conviction and not simply the imposition of sentence.” Ball v. United States, 470 U. S. 856, 861 (1985). It is for this reason that running sentences concurrently does not avoid the problem; an unauthorized “ `second conviction, even if it results in no greater sentence, is an impermissible punishment.' ” Rutledge v. United…Read in context ›
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