Harris v. Oklahoma
The Supreme Court ruled that a man convicted of felony-murder in Oklahoma could not then be separately tried for the armed robbery that was used to prove the murder charge.
Because Oklahoma's own courts had said proving the robbery was necessary to prove the murder, putting him on trial for the robbery afterward amounted to being punished twice for the same crime, which the Constitution's protection against double jeopardy forbids.
“[A] person [who] has been tried and convicted for a crime which has various incidents included in it, . . . cannot be a second time tried for one of those incidents without being twice put in jeopardy for the same offence.”
The Court's core reasoning for why a second trial on the robbery charge violated double jeopardy.
How it got here: Oklahoma's Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the robbery conviction after denying a double jeopardy challenge, and the defendant sought Supreme Court review.
The Case in Depth
What happened
A store clerk in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was shot and killed during an armed robbery carried out by two men. One of them was convicted of felony-murder, a charge that under Oklahoma law required proof that he committed the underlying armed robbery. The state then charged him separately with that same armed robbery.
The question before the Court
If a robbery conviction is legally required to prove a felony-murder charge, can the state later put the same man on trial for that robbery too?
The Court's answer
No — the Court ruled that once Oklahoma's courts held that proving the armed robbery was necessary to prove the felony-murder charge, the robbery became a lesser offense legally included within the murder charge. Trying the man again, in a separate proceeding, for that same robbery after he had already been convicted of murder amounted to punishing him twice for the same underlying conduct.
The Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment forbids exactly this kind of second prosecution. Because the State itself had conceded that every element of the robbery had to be proved to convict him of murder, the Court reversed the robbery conviction outright rather than sending the case back for further proceedings.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
The ruling protects criminal defendants from being tried piecemeal for crimes that are legally bound up in a charge they've already faced. Prosecutors in cases involving felony-murder or similar layered charges must bring related charges together rather than pursuing a defendant a second time once a conviction already required proving the same underlying facts.
What changes now
The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals's judgment upholding the robbery conviction is reversed, meaning that conviction cannot stand. This is a final merits ruling, not a temporary order. The case does not require further factual proceedings; the constitutional violation is resolved by barring the separate robbery prosecution outright.
Concurrences and dissents
How the Justices voted
Separate writings (1). Justice Brennan (author of a concurrence).
Concurrence — Justice Brennan
Justice Brennan agreed with the result but would have reversed on a different, broader ground: that the state failed to prosecute both charges in a single proceeding. He argued the Double Jeopardy Clause generally requires all charges arising from a single criminal episode to be brought together, except in very limited circumstances not present here. Read the full concurrence →
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court applied the rule that when a conviction for a greater crime cannot be obtained without also proving a lesser crime, the lesser crime is treated as included within the greater one for double jeopardy purposes.
- Under this rule, once someone is convicted of the greater offense, the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment bars a later, separate prosecution for the lesser offense that was necessarily proved as part of the first case.
- The Oklahoma courts had already held, and the State itself conceded, that proving the armed robbery was required to prove the felony-murder charge, making robbery a necessarily included offense of the murder charge.
- Applying the included-offense rule to these facts, the Court concluded that trying the man again for the armed robbery after his murder conviction violated the Double Jeopardy Clause.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms In re Nielsen (131 U.S. 176)
The Court relied on this 1889 case as the source of the rule barring successive trials for included offenses.