Dealing a blow to claims of sovereignty, justices ruled the commonwealth cannot prosecute people for local crimes if they have been convicted in federal court

The US supreme court dealt a blow on Thursday to Puerto Rico’s claims of sovereignty, ruling that the island remains at the whims of Washington DC when it comes to enforcing its own criminal laws.

The justices ruled 6-2 that the commonwealth must abide by the US constitution’s double jeopardy clause, and cannot prosecute people for local crimes if those people have already been convicted in federal court.

The ruling in part clarifies Puerto Rico’s ambiguous legal status, which has heavy shades of the island’s colonial history and has left the territory grappling with corruption and a huge debt crisis. The supreme court is also weighing a case about whether Puerto Rico has the right, as states do, to restructure some of its $70bn debt, which the governor has called “unpayable”.

In the criminal case, the six justices found that the “ultimate source” of the island’s legal power is the US Congress, even though Puerto Rico has had its own constitution and elected government since the 1950s.

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Puerto Rico had tried to bring gun charges on the local level against two men, Luis Sánchez Valle and James Gómez Vázquez, who had earlier pleaded guilty to trafficking in federal court. The defendants had argued that unlike the states, which are “separate sovereigns” and can prosecute under their own laws, Puerto Rico’s argument violated the double jeopardy clause.

In the ruling, Justice Elena Kagan traced the “ultimate source” of authority for Puerto Rico and the states. “If two entities derive their power to punish from wholly independent sources,” she wrote, “then they may bring successive prosecutions.”

States rely on authority that existed before they joined the US, meaning that state prosecutions have “inherent sovereignty” separate from Congress, for instance, and Kagan noted, similarly, that Native Americans and “a tribe’s power to punish pre-existed the Union”.

But if two entities draw power from the same source, the justices said, then they cannot prosecute on similar charges. Kagan nodded to Puerto Rico’s 1952 transformation into a commonwealth, but said the trail of power still led back to Congress. The island’s constitution was amended and approved by Congress, she noted, and the territory was acquired when it was a colony subservient to Spain in 1898.

“Put simply, Congress con­ferred the authority to create the Puerto Rico constitution,” she wrote, “which in turn confers the authority to bring criminal charges.”

“That makes Congress the original source of power for Puerto Rico’s prosecutors – as it is for the Federal Government’s. The island’s Constitution, significant though it is, does not break the chain.”

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Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor dissented, saying that over time Puerto Rico’s criminal law had become founded in the island’s people and constitution.

Both Breyer in his dissent and Kagan in her majority were careful not to make a sweeping ruling about Puerto Rico’s murky status somewhere between a colony and a state – or to hint at the coming debt decision. Breyer began his opinion by agreeing with Kagan about the “narrow” nature of the case, writing: “this case poses a special, not a general, question about Puerto Rico’s sovereignty”.

The supreme court’s decision agreed with that of Puerto Rico’s own supreme court, which sided with the defendants. Governor Alejandro García Padilla has argued that the White House’s position – that Puerto Rico’s authorities exist at Congress’s pleasure – clashes with the notion of “meaningful self-government” by Puerto Ricans.

Puerto Rico’s justice secretary, César Miranda, told the Associated Press that he respected the court’s decision but insisted the island’s authorities would prosecute anyone who threatens security there.

“The supreme court’s decision has a limited impact on criminal prosecution,” he said, adding Puerto Rican officials should again raise the question of the island’s future relationship with the US.