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SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
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No. 91-1231
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UNITED STATES, PETITIONER v. ALVIN J. DIXON
and MICHAEL FOSTER
on writ of certiorari to the district of columbia
court of appeals
[June 28, 1993]
Justice Blackmun, concurring in the judgment in part
and dissenting in part.
I cannot agree that contempt of court is the -same
offence- under the Double Jeopardy Clause as either
assault with intent to kill or possession of cocaine with
intent to distribute it. I write separately to emphasize
two interrelated points.
I
I agree with Justice Souter that -the Blockburger test
is not the exclusive standard for determining whether the
rule against successive prosecutions applies in a given
case.- Post, at 14. I also share both his and Justice
White's dismay that the Court so cavalierly has overruled
a precedent that is barely three years old and that has
proved neither unworkable nor unsound. I continue to
believe that Grady v. Corbin, 495 U. S. 508 (1990), was
correctly decided, and that the Double Jeopardy Clause
prohibits a subsequent criminal prosecution where the
proof required to convict on the later offense would
require proving conduct that constitutes an offense for
which a defendant already has been prosecuted.
If this were a case involving successive prosecutions
under the substantive criminal law (as was true in Harris
v. Oklahoma, 433 U. S. 682 (1977), Illinois v. Vitale, 447
U. S. 410 (1980), and Grady), I would agree that the
Double Jeopardy Clause could bar the subsequent prosecu-
tion. But we are concerned here with contempt of court,
a special situation. We explained in Young v. United
States ex rel. Vuitton et Fils S.A., 481 U. S. 787 (1987):
-The fact that we have come to regard criminal
contempt as `a crime in the ordinary sense,' [Bloom
v. Illinois, 391 U. S. 194, 201 (1968)], does not mean
that any prosecution of contempt must now be consid-
ered an execution of the criminal law in which only
the Executive Branch may engage. . . . That criminal
procedure protections are now required in such prose-
cutions should not obscure the fact that these proceed-
ings are not intended to punish conduct proscribed as
harmful by the general criminal laws. Rather, they
are designed to serve the limited purpose of vindicat-
ing the authority of the court. In punishing con-
tempt, the Judiciary is sanctioning conduct that
violates specific duties imposed by the court itself,
arising directly from the parties' participation in
judicial proceedings.- Id., at 799-800.
The purpose of contempt is not to punish an offense
against the community at large but rather to punish the
specific offense of disobeying a court order. This Court
said nearly a century ago: -[A] court, enforcing obedience
to its orders by proceedings for contempt, is not executing
the criminal laws of the land, but only securing to suitors
the rights which it has adjudged them entitled to.- In re
Debs, 158 U. S. 564, 596 (1895).
II
Contempt is one of the very few mechanisms available
to a trial court to vindicate the authority of its orders.
I fear that the Court's willingness to overlook the unique
interests served by contempt proceedings not only will
jeopardize the ability of trial courts to control those
defendants under their supervision but will undermine
their ability to respond effectively to unmistakable threats
to their own authority and to those who have sought the
court's protection.
This fact is poignantly stressed by the amici:
-[C]ontempt litigators and criminal prosecutors seek
to further different interests. A battered woman
seeks to enforce her private order to end the violence
against her. In contrast, the criminal prosecutor is
vindicating society's interest in enforcing its criminal
law. The two interests are not the same, and to
consider the contempt litigator and the criminal
prosecutor as one and the same would be to adopt an
absurd fiction- (emphasis in original). Brief for Ayuda
et al. as Amici Curiae 20.
Finally, I cannot so easily distinguish between -sum-
mary- and -nonsummary- contempt proceedings, ante, at
6-7, for the interests served in both are fundamentally
similar. It is as much a -disruption of judicial process,-
ante, at 6, to disobey a judge's conditional release order
as it is to disturb a judge's courtroom. And the interests
served in vindicating the authority of the court are
fundamentally different from those served by the prosecu-
tion of violations of the substantive criminal law. Because
I believe that neither Dixon nor Foster would be -subject
for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or
limb,- U. S. Const., Amdt. 5, I would reverse the judg-
ment of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.