Hudson v. United States

Not to be confused with United States v. Hudson.

Hudson v. United States
Supreme Court of the United States
Decided December 10, 1997
Full case name	Hudson v. United States
Citations	522 U.S. 93 ( more )
Holding
The Double Jeopardy Clause does not prevent a criminal prosecution from following a civil penalty imposed by an administrative agency.
Court membership
Chief Justice William Rehnquist Associate Justices John P. Stevens  · Sandra Day O'Connor Antonin Scalia  · Anthony Kennedy David Souter  · Clarence Thomas Ruth Bader Ginsburg  · Stephen Breyer
Case opinions
Majority	Rehnquist
Concurrence	Scalia
Concurrence	Stevens (in judgment)
Concurrence	Souter (in judgment)
Concurrence	Breyer (in judgment), joined by Ginsburg
Laws applied
Double Jeopardy Clause

Hudson v. United States, 522 U.S. 93(1997), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the court held that the Double Jeopardy Clause does not prevent a criminal prosecution from following a civil penalty imposed by an administrative agency. ^{[1] [2]}

Background

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) imposed monetary penalties and occupational debarment on banking executives including John Hudson for violating 12 U. S. C. §§ 84(a)(1) and 375b. The executives caused two banks in which they were officials, the First National Bank of Tipton and the First National Bank of Hammon, to make certain loans in a manner that unlawfully allowed Hudson to receive the loans' benefit. When the government later criminally indicted the executives for essentially the same conduct, they moved to dismiss under the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment. The federal district court ultimately dismissed the indictments, but the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed, relying on United States v. Halper . ^[1]

Opinion of the court

The Supreme Court issued an opinion on December 10, 1997. The majority opinion "largely disavowed" the reasoning of Halper and sought to return the state of the law to its state before Halper, but the majority did not overrule it. In his concurrence, Justice Breyer described Halper as in a "legal limbo." Instead, the majority leaned on tests including the earlier case United States v. Ward . ^[1] In other words, the Double Jeopardy Clause prohibits multiple criminal punishments for the same conduct; when Congress labels a penalty as civil, it is possible for it to still be criminal if it was intended as criminal or the effect of it was criminal punishment. That said, civil penalties that are merely "remedial" are generally not criminal punishment. This determination is based on the text of the statute, not on what actually happened in a particular case. ^[2]

References

1. Hudson v. United States, 522 U.S. 93 (1997).
2. Lieberman, Jethro K. (1999). "Punishment, Criminal and Civil". A Practical Companion to the Constitution. pp. 564–65.

External links

• Text of Hudson v. United States, 522 U.S. 93(1997) is available from: Cornell Findlaw Justia

This article incorporates written opinion of a United States federal court. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the text is in the public domain .