Barrett v. United States · ¶82

Perhaps some might worry about the consequences of this second solution. Today, after all, prosecutors routinely bring concurrent charges for greater offenses and their lesser included variants, giving juries several degrees of culpability to choose from. One might wonder whether affording the Double Jeopardy Clause the same meaning in the concurrent-prosecution context that it already enjoys in the successive-prosecution context would render this practice illegal. It would not. A jury could reach a guilty verdict on two charges that constitute the same offense, but no double jeopardy problem would arise so long as the court does not enter judgments of conviction on both. It may not be clear at a trial's outset which charge (if any) will yield a conviction. But it will be certain all along that, when judgment day comes, the defendant will be convicted and punished only once for any…

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