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10
pontificia universidad católica de puerto rico
does not have, just in the nature of things: It has no
capacity, no magic wand or airbrush, to erase or otherwise
rewrite its own foundational role in conferring political
authority. Or otherwise said, the delegator cannot make
itself any less so– no matter how much authority it opts
to hand over. And our dual-sovereignty test makes this
historical fact dispositive: If an entity’s authority to enact
and enforce criminal law ultimately comes from Congress,
then it cannot follow a federal prosecution with its own.
That is true of Puerto Rico, because Congress authorized
and approved its Constitution, from which prosecutorial
power now flows. So the Double Jeopardy Clause bars
both Puerto Rico and the United States from prosecuting
a single person for the same conduct under equivalent
criminal laws.”
8
A fin de que el lector pueda llegar a sus propias
conclusiones reproducimos en las notas al pie de la página
partes significativas del texto de la opinión. En la primera
parte, el Tribunal explica la diferencia entre el término
soberanía y el concepto fuente original. En el federalismo
americano los estados y el gobierno federal ambos tienen
soberanía en las áreas de jurisdicción reservadas para cada uno
de sus gobiernos.
9
8
Commonwealth of Puerto Rico v. Sánchez Valle Et al
. 579 U.S. ___ (2016) (“Slip opinión” de 9 de
junio de 2016) pp. 14-15.
9 “Truthbetold,however, ‘sovereignty’ inthiscontextdoesnotbear itsordinarymeaning. For
whatever reason, the test we have devised to decide whether two governments are distinct
for double jeopardy purposes overtly disregards common indicia of sovereignty. Under
that standard, we do not examine the ‘extent of control’ that ‘one prosecuting authority
[wields] over the other.’
Wheeler
, 435 U. S., at 320. The degree to which an entity exercises
self-governance –whether autonomously managing its own affairs or continually submitting
to outside direction– plays no role in the analysis. Nor do we care about a government’s more
particular ability to enact and enforce its own criminal laws…. In short, the inquiry (despite
its label) does not probe whether a government possesses the usual attributes, or acts in the
common manner, of a sovereign entity.
“Rather, as Puerto Rico itself acknowledges, our test hinges on a single criterion: the
‘ultimate source’ of the power undergirding the respective prosecutions... Whether two
prosecuting entities are dual sovereigns in the double jeopardy context, we have stated,
depends on ‘whether [they] draw their authority to punish the offender from distinct
sources of power.’ The inquiry is thus historical, not functional—looking at the deepest
wellsprings, not the current exercise, of prosecutorial authority. If two entities derive their
power to punish from wholly independent sources (imagine here a pair of parallel lines),
then they may bring successive prosecutions. Conversely, if those entities draw their power
from the same ultimate source (imagine now two lines emerging from a common point, even
if later diverging), then they may not.” Id, pp. 6-7.