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O.J. Simpson, in case you have been marooned on a desert island for the last several years, was acquitted by a criminal jury but found liable by a civil jury. Ditto subway shooter Bernhard Goetz, who got only a slap on the wrist in his criminal prosecution and then faced his victims in a civil trial. Former Los Angeles police officer Stacey Koon was acquitted on state charges of beating Rodney King and then convicted on federal charges of violating King's civil rights. And what about the multiple prosecutions of the Menendez brothers for the murder of their parents? Or accused Connecticut rapist Alex Kelly? Lawyers will give you suitably technical explanations for why each of these cases is an exception to the Constitution: mistrials after a hung jury (the Menendez brothers and Alex Kelly) don't count. Civil trials aren't covered by the double jeopardy clause because they don't put anyone in \"jeopardy\" for an \"offense.\" Koon and Nelson? The double jeopardy clause only applies if the two trials are for the \"same offense.\" Although based on the same conduct, the federal offenses charged against both Koon and Nelson were defined differently from the state offenses. And, in any event, successive state and federal prosecutions are legally excused under the most superbly technical exception: The \"dual sovereignty\" doctrine, which says it isn't double jeopardy if you have been tried for the same offense by two (or more) different jurisdictions.

Another myth floating around the confirmation hearings held that [John G. Roberts] is a cipher and we do not know what kind of decisions he will make as a justice. Roberts has, of course, left a long paper trail of memos from his years of service within the government (not all of which have been released to the Senate). He says that these memos don't count because as a lawyer for the Reagan and Bush administrations, he was not necessarily expressing his own beliefs. This slate-wiping is too convenient and too broad. The briefs Roberts wrote for the government do indeed represent his clients' choice of position. But many of the memos Roberts wrote urged his employers to take more extreme positions to resist expansive enforcement of civil-rights laws, for example. In some memos, he certainly seemed to be writing in his own voice: \"I honestly find it troubling . . .\" The memos show that, as his colleague Bruce Fein said, he was one of an \"ideological band of brothers.\" Roberts contends that he can put aside his firmly held conservative views when he dons his judicial robes. I don't doubt that he intends to be open-minded, but I do doubt that he can or will shed his partiality. Kenneth Manning, a political scientist who has studied the 190 decisions Roberts has made so far as an appellate judge, concludes that his positions are \"very\" conservative on criminal justice matters (compared with other appellate judges, not exactly a liberal group), and \"exceptionally\" conservative in cases involving civil rights and civil liberties.