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Death and double jeopardy.

Article Excerpt
In Sattazahn v. Pennsylvania, David Allen Sattazahn was convicted of first-degree murder. The state sought the death penalty, based on the aggravating circumstance that the murder occurred during the commission of a felony. The jury hung on whether to impose the death penalty, so under Pennsylvania law, the trial judge discharged the jury and entered a sentence of life imprisonment.

Sattazahn, who successfully appealed his underlying conviction, was retried and reconvicted. The state sought the death penalty again and added a second aggravating circumstance--Sattazahn's significant history of violent-felony convictions, based on guilty pleas to murder, burglaries, and robbery entered after the first trial. This time the jury imposed the death penalty, and Sattazahn appealed again, claiming that double jeopardy and due process barred the imposition of the death sentence at the second trial. The case went to the U.S. Supreme Court this term, which concluded by a 5-4 vote that the sentence was proper. (1)

The Fifth Amendment's Double Jeopardy Clause states that "no person shall ... be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb." The Supreme Court has interpreted the amendment to mean that a defendant cannot be retried after an acquittal or retried for a lesser offense after a conviction, and that he or she cannot be punished twice for the same offense. More specifically, if a jury imposes a sentence of life imprisonment in a death penalty case, a state cannot ordinarily seek the death penalty a second time if the defendant has the first conviction set aside and is retried. (2)

However, as the majority pointed out, that is not what happened in Sattazahn....

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