Double jeopardy for Michael Vick

On a day when fallen boxing champion Mike Tyson pleaded guilty to a cocaine charge and faces four years in prison, the county prosecutor in Surry County announced that he will seek a state indictment against Michael Vick for dogfighting and cruelty to animals.

And if the fallen former Falcons quarterback is convicted of state charges, he would face an additional 40 years in prison.

One presumes that Vick's legal team would fight any state indictments on the grounds of double jeopardy. It is a basic legal right, addressed in the Constitution, that forbids the government from trying Americans twice for the same offense.

In recent years as the U.S. Supreme Court has grown more conservative, it has become more "liberal" in its interpretation of what constitutes double jeopardy. According to our friends at Wikipedia:

Double jeopardy is ... not implicated for separate offenses or in separate jurisdictions arising from the same act. For example, in United States v. Felix (1992), the Supreme Court ruled: "an...offense and a conspiracy to commit that offense are not the same offense for double jeopardy purposes."

Which would seem to place Vick in a tenuous situation where he could face serious jail time on top of whatever federal sentence he may receive in December.

It will be argued that Surry County Commonwealth Attorney Gerald G. Poindexter is piling on and using the indictments to save face. Poindexter's office originally pursued the dogfighting allegations against Vick, and was criticized for not being aggressive enough. In fact, the feds swooped in and basically took the case away from Poindexter.

He told the AP last night:

"Most of the matters that I'm presenting have already been admitted in sworn statements authored by the defendants in the federal proceedings," Poindexter said.

Poindexter couldn't detail the exact indictments he will pursue, but said the local investigation and the federal investigation largely focused on different crimes.

"The killing of dogs is one of those statutory prohibitions. Dogfighting is a crime, the mistreatment of animals is a crime, so you could take your pick, or take them all," Poindexter said before cutting the conversation short. "I don't have anything else to say about it. I'm through with it. Hopefully it's coming to an end."

For Michael Vick, it appears, the end is not coming anytime soon.