WASHINGTON, April 19 (UPI) -- The U.S. Supreme Court Monday ruled prosecuting someone in both U.S. and American-Indian courts does not constitute double jeopardy.
The ruling was part of a continuing effort to refine how police and the public interact.
In a case out of North Dakota, a court majority said the federal government may charge a suspect with essentially the same crime as that charged by an Indian tribe, when the tribe is acting as a sovereign authority, without violating double jeopardy.
The Constitution bars double jeopardy -- punishing someone twice for the same offense. But the Constitution does not bar prosecutions by "separate sovereigns."
And in a case out of Washington state, the Supreme Court said it would hear argument next term on whether an arrest is "reasonable" if the reason an officer stopped someone is not closely related to the eventual crime charged.
