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  1. Nov 2021
    1. SynopsisBackground: Following his conviction, pursuant to guilty plea, of two counts of driving while intoxicated with a child passenger under 15 years of age, for which he was sentenced to ten years on each count, to run concurrently, applicant filed pro se application for writ of habeas corpus alleging that conviction on both counts violated double jeopardy. Application was forwarded from the 369th District Court, Cherokee County, and the Court of Criminal Appeals, 2020 WL 5650834, concluded that applicant alleged facts that, if true, might entitle him to relief, and remanded for findings of fact and conclusions of law as to whether applicant was sentenced to multiple punishments in violation of the Double Jeopardy Clause. On remand, the District Court agreed with applicant and recommended that the second count be vacated. The Court of Criminal Appeals, 2021 WL 476471, filed and set case to determine the appropriate unit of prosecution for offenses under the statute of conviction.Holding: The Court of Criminal Appeals, Keller, P.J., held that proper unit of prosecution for offense is each act of driving, not each child occupant.
    1. Last year Joshua Katz, a popular Princeton classics professor, wrote an article critical of a letter published by a group of Princeton faculty on race. In response The Daily Princetonian, a student newspaper, spent seven months investigating his past relationships with students, eventually convincing university officials to relitigate incidents from years earlier that had already been adjudicated—a classic breach of James Madison’s belief that no one should be punished for the same thing twice. The Daily Princetonian investigation looks more like an attempt to ostracize a professor guilty of wrong-think than an attempt to bring resolution to a case of alleged misbehavior.

      The example of Joshua Katz brings up the idea of double jeopardy within the social sphere. Is this form of punishment ethical or fair? Also, while those transgressions were held to account by the norms of their day, were there other larger harms (entailing unwritten rules) to humanity that weren't adjudicated at the time which are now coming to the surface as part of a bigger aggregate harm?

      It could be seen as related to the idea of reparations. In some sense, aside from the general harms of war—in which they participated—the South and slave holders in particular were never held to account or punished for their crimes against humanity. Though they may have felt as if they were. Where are those harms adjudicated? Because of a quirk of fate and poor politics following the Civil War and not being held to account, have those in the South continued perpetuating many of the same harms they were doing, simply in different guises? When will they be held to account? How would reparations look in the form of a national level of restorative justice?