The court below is the only District Court which has held conviction in a state court a bar to prosecution for the same act under the Volstead Law.

On appeal to the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Taft held that a second trial might be had, saying: "The defendants committed two different offenses by the same act, the offense against the State and a different offense against the United States," and denied the double jeopardy plea

—not a bar to a prosecution in a federal court for the same act under the National Prohibition Act, on the grounds (1) that the state court was without jurisdiction of an offense against the federal statute, and (2) that the case charged constituted separate offenses under the state and federal statutes, respectively, though their provisions violated were the same.

In these several cases it is true, the state law under which the former conviction or acquittal had been had was enacted prior to the adoption of the Eighteenth Amendment; but on the principle no distinction can be based on this fact, particularly as the Ohio act was passed by virtue of the power conferred by an amendment to the State Constitution and under its general …

The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

This doctrine of independent sovereignties and separte offenses is applicable to violations by the same act of both the state and national prohibition acts.

[BOOK] Federal Criminal Law Doctrines: The Forgotten Influence of National Prohibition

[CITATION] Dictionary of American history.-