This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, June 21st, 2019. I'm Caleb Brown.

Double Jeopardy should not apply to people charged with crimes in the United States.

This week the Supreme Court moved to uphold a large exemption to that constitutional provision.

Cato's Clark Neely and Ilia Shapiro discuss the Gamble case.

Mr Gamble is a felon and he was in possession of a firearm in violation of both state and federal

law and so he was convicted. in violation of both state and federal law.

And so he was convicted under Alabama state law.

Punished with a 10-year sentence,

nine of years of which were suspended, the feds decided that was not enough

punishment, so then they charged him and got another conviction and attacked on another

three years for that charge and he challenged this not that you know he was not a

felon in possession but that this was the government is penalizing me twice for the same

crime that would seem to violate my rights under the

double jeopardy clause of the Fifth Amendment. And anybody who took 10th grade

Civics should be aware of this particular prohibition and why it exists.

Well like so many things what you learn in 10th grade civics about the Constitution

you then have to go to law school to unlearn. Because your impression from 10th grade civics

would be exactly right.

The whole point of having a double jeopardy provision

is to make sure that the government doesn't

get two bites at the apple. And that's exactly what happened in this case but you have to go to

law school to to then dig down into the doctrine to realize that the Supreme Court has been allowing

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