Sotomayor and Gorsuch question second prosecution

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Jesus Herrera-Salazar’s appeal, while Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Neil Gorsuch jointly questioned whether his second prosecution violated the constitutional protection against double jeopardy. Sotomayor issued a statement accompanying the court’s decision not to review the case, and Gorsuch joined it. The statement did not overturn Herrera-Salazar’s conviction or resolve the constitutional question. Instead, the justices urged lower courts to give the Double Jeopardy Clause full weight in similar cases. Herrera-Salazar, a Mexican national who had previously been deported, was prosecuted in 2020 for being found in the United States after removal. After pleading guilty and serving a prison sentence, he was placed on supervised release. The conditions prohibited him from leaving the Eastern District of Oklahoma without authorization, according to the justices’ account. While subject to those conditions, Herrera-Salazar was found in Oklahoma and prosecuted again under the same federal immigration statute. A jury convicted him, leading to another prison sentence and supervised release.