Copsey v. State

MOYLAN, Judge.

The mushrooming case law on double jeopardy over the last several decades has treated almost exclusively the subtleties and nuances emerging on the far periphery of that complex subject—collateral estoppel, multiple-jurisdiction prosecutions, prosecutorial overreaching, etc. The present appeal, by way of contrast, touches the core value of that law. Whereas frequently we are confronting strained attenuations of the invigorating principle, we are looking here at the very paradigm of the double jeopardy protection.

“Double jeopardy” was a convenient umbrella term adopted by Sir…