In the 1940 case Berry v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled on a matter concerning double jeopardy. The defendant, Berry, was initially charged with grand larceny in a District of Columbia court for stealing mail bags from the Post Office Department and was acquitted. However, he was later indicted and convicted under federal law for theft of government property involving the same act. On appeal to the Supreme Court, Berry argued that his second trial constituted double jeopardy as it involved essentially identical charges to those he had previously been acquitted of. The Supreme Court disagreed with this argument and upheld his conviction by stating that although both crimes were similar in nature (theft), they were not identical because each statute required proof of an additional fact which other did not require; thus constituting two separate offenses under Blockburger test - a legal standard developed by SCOTUS in Blockburger v United States (1932) to determine whether charging an individual twice constitutes double jeopardy or not.

In the dissenting opinion for Berry v. United States, Justice Frank Murphy argued that the majority's decision to uphold a conviction based on evidence obtained through an unlawful search and seizure was in violation of Fourth Amendment rights. He contended that allowing such evidence would encourage law enforcement officers to disregard constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, as they could still use any illegally obtained evidence in court. In his view, this undermined not only individual liberties but also public trust in law enforcement agencies and the justice system as a whole. Furthermore, he believed it contradicted previous Supreme Court rulings which had established that unlawfully seized evidence should be excluded from trials due to its inherent unreliability.