Johnson v. Oklahoma

Background

A man was first charged in Tulsa with kidnapping for extortion and then charged in a neighboring county with first-degree murder arising from the same criminal episode. He was tried and convicted of kidnapping and given a 60-year sentence. After various state-court motions and appeals about whether the kidnapping conviction barred further prosecution, the murder charge was reduced to second-degree murder, the defendant was tried, convicted, and sentenced to 10 years to life, and the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed that conviction.

Reasoning

The basic question was whether the Constitution’s protection against being tried or punished more than once for the same conduct (the Double Jeopardy Clause) prevented the State from trying the defendant on murder after his kidnapping conviction from the same episode. The Supreme Court did not take up the legal question on the merits here; instead, the Court denied the petition for review, so the state-court judgment stands. One Justice, however, wrote a dissent arguing that the Double Jeopardy Clause, as applied to the States, generally requires trying all charges that arise from a single criminal episode together and would have granted review and reversed.

Real world impact

Because the Court denied review, the defendant’s second-degree murder conviction and 10-to-life sentence remain in effect. The denial does not resolve the broader constitutional question nationally, so similar disputes about trying related charges separately could still be decided differently in other cases or later by the Court.

Dissents or concurrances

Justice Brennan, joined by Justice Marshall, dissented and would have granted review and reversed, emphasizing broad protection against multiple prosecutions for the same episode.