I think we’ve discussed, and settled, questions about double jeopardy like this in other threads already – in particular, questions about whether someone pardoned by the president can then be prosecuted for the same crime at the state level. Here is a summary as I understood it all, some points of which are relevant here:
Some conclusions were:
-
Double jeopardy only applies if, in the first place, you are tried for a crime and acquitted. If you are tried and convicted in one jurisdiction, you can still be tried for the same crime in another jurisdiction.
-
The Supreme Court decreed, somewhere, that the states and the Federal government are separate sovereigns, and neither jurisdiction can create double jeopardy in the other. Thus, even if you are tried and acquitted in either Federal or state court, you can still be tried in the other.
-
Some states, thinking that the above is not how it should be, passed their own laws saying that someone who is acquitted in a Federal trial cannot then be tried for the same crime in a state court. But this is not symmetrical, as it only binds that state and not the Federal government. So an acquittal in a state court could still be followed by a trial for the same crime in a Federal court.
-
Then the questions started coming in, as to whether a presidential pardon was equivalent to an acquittal and would preclude a subsequent trial for the same crime in a state court. This topic started heating up when Trump was handing out pardons for crimes that New York will still investigating and potentially going to prosecute.
-
So New York, IIRC, passed a more specifically targeted law, to the effect that close associates of the president, if pardoned, could still be liable for prosecution for the same crimes in state court, to override the more general state law that a presidential pardon would preclude state-level prosecution.