"earlier that same year" is a grammatically correct phrase that can be used in written English.
It is typically used to refer to an event that happened earlier in the same year as the current time period being discussed. Example: The company experienced a major downturn in profits in the fourth quarter, but earlier that same year, they had seen record-breaking sales.
Earlier that same year he had won the WBA junior-middleweight title with a ninth-round knockout of Ayub Kalule.
The blocklong museum faces Kelly Ingram Park, where earlier that same year, the public safety commissioner, Bull Connor, blasted protesters with fire hoses and set dogs on them.
The auction of the painting came on the heels of the record-setting sale of a Hassam flag painting for $7.9 million earlier that same year.
Earlier that same year, James Grucci, one of those killed in the blast, created the company's signature gold split comet for the Brooklyn Bridge centennial.
Earlier that same year, Mr. Obama publicly criticized proposed Chinese rules that would require technology companies to turn over encryption keys to Chinese authorities.
Or, earlier that same year, Kevin Spacey's barnstorming performance at the Almeida Theatre in "The Iceman Cometh," the O'Neill epic that Mr. Spacey then took to the Old Vic and Broadway.
Why was Hassan's shooting at Fort Hood an act of terror when an earlier shooting that same year by Sgt. John Russell, who shot five soldiers dead at Camp Liberty, not an act of terror?
Planetary scientist Dr. Lori Fenton joined the SETI Institute as a principal investigator in 2006, and was awarded NASA's Carl Sagan Fellowship for Early Career Researchers that same year.
Early that same year, Gygax published Chainmail, a miniatures wargame that simulated medieval-era tactical combat, which he had originally written with hobby-shop owner Jeff Perren.
LaHaye, who died in December 1999 in a small airplane crash, had put his property on the market earlier in that same year.
The Board of Commissioners of the Consolidated Debt of the City of New Orleans — to give it its full title — was made a part of the city machinery under an act passed early in that same year.
