# Brown v. Ohio

> Supreme Court of the United States · June 16, 1977 · 432 U.S. 161

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9426875

## Case

- **Full name:** Brown v. Ohio
- **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States
- **Decided:** June 16, 1977
- **Citations:** 432 U.S. 161; 97 S. Ct. 2221; 53 L. Ed. 2d 187; 1977 U.S. LEXIS 117
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Brennan
- **Judges:** Blackmun, Brennan, Marshall, Powell, Powusll, Stevens, Stewart, White
- **Cited by:** 3,063 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9426875

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- stating that “[w]here consecutive sentences are imposed at a single criminal trial, the role of the constitutional guarantee is limited to assuring that the court does not exceed its legislative authorization by imposing multiple punishments for the same offense”
- stating that a “lesser included offense ... requires no proof beyond that which is required for conviction of the greater” and that “[t]he greater offense is therefore by definition the ‘same’ for purposes of double jeopardy as any lesser offense included in it”
- holding that "[t]he greater offense is ... by definition the `same' for purposes of double jeopardy as any lesser offense included in it" and, thus, a conviction for a lesser offense prevented a subsequent conviction for a greater offense
- holding that each statute must require proof of an additional fact that the other does not because the Double Jeopardy Clause prohibits successive prosecutions as well as cumulative punishments for a greater or lesser included offense
- holding that double jeopardy bars a prosecution for a greater offense after a conviction for a lesser-included offense

## Opinion text

Mr. Justice Brennan,
with whom Mr. Justice Marshall joins, concurring.
I join the Court’s opinion, but in any event would reverse on the ground, not addressed by the Court, that the State did not prosecute petitioner in a single proceeding. I adhere to the view that the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment, applied to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment, requires the prosecution in one proceeding, except in extremely limited circumstances not present here, of “all the charges against a defendant that grow out of a single criminal act, occurrence, episode, or transaction.” Ashe v. Swenson, 397 U. S. 436, 453-454 , and n. 7 (1970) (Brennan, J., concurring). See Thompson v. Oklahoma, 429 U. S. 1053 (1977) (Brennan, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari), and cases collected therein. In my view the Court’s suggestion, ante, at 169 n. 8, that the Ohio Legislature might be free to make joyriding a separate and distinct offense for each day a motor vehicle is operated without the owner’s consent would not affect the applicability of the single-transaction test. Though under some circumstances a legislature may divide a continuing course of conduct into discrete offenses, I would nevertheless hold that all charges growing out of conduct constituting a “single criminal act, occurrence, episode, or transaction” must be tried in a single proceeding.

---

Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9426875. Public record. Not legal advice.