Brown and Harris appeared at first impression to demand the reversal of Sekou's murder conviction. Case law that came after the events in question in the Supreme Court illuminated the salient issues. A key ingredient of court’s decision and the final disposition of the case in Harris was the state's concession that the crime of robbery for which the defendant had been indicted was the underlying felony which had been proven in the earlier prosecution. If this particular circumstance had not in fact been true, the armed robbery would not have been a lesser included offense of the murder.
In the appeal that was at issue in the case, if the state could have proven murder without proving robbery the prosecutions that came afterward did not constitute prosecutions for the same offense as that term is defined as it relates to the Double Jeopardy Clause. Once the state tried and convicted for armed robbery, it was thereafter completely prohibited from prosecuting him for felony-murder or any other included offense only if the sole underlying felony upon which that prosecution was based was the armed robbery, but not necessarily if other events had transpired that were not material to the charge.