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Opinion of the Court
guilty even though innocent." United States v. DiFrancesco, 449 U. S. 117, 136 (1980). When a defendant has been acquitted, the "Clause guarantees that the State shall not be permitted to make repeated attempts to convict him." Wilson, supra, at 343. Where, however, there is "no threat of either multiple punishment or successive prosecutions, the Double Jeopardy Clause is not offended." 420 U. S., at 344 (footnote omitted). Thus, our cases establish that the primary evil to be guarded against is successive prosecutions: "[T]he prohibition against multiple trials is the controlling constitutional principle." DiFrancesco, supra, at 132 (internal citations omitted). See also United States v. Martin Linen Supply Co., 430 U. S. 564, 569 (1977).
Schiro urges us to treat the sentencing phase of a single prosecution as a successive prosecution for purposes of the Double Jeopardy Clause. We decline to do so. Our prior decisions are inconsistent with the argument that a first sentencing proceeding can amount to a successive prosecution. In Stroud v. United States, 251 U. S. 15, 17-18 (1919), we held that where a defendant's murder conviction was overturned on appeal, the defendant could be resentenced after retrial. Similarly, we found no constitutional infirmity in holding a second sentencing hearing where the first sentence was improperly based on a prior conviction for which the defendant had been pardoned. Lockhart v. Nelson, 488 U. S. 33 (1988). See also North Carolina v. Pearce, supra, at 721 ("[W]e cannot say that the constitutional guarantee against double jeopardy of its own weight restricts the imposition of an otherwise lawful single punishment" upon retrial); Chaffin v. Stynchcombe, 412 U. S. 17, 23-24 (1973) (same). If a second sentencing proceeding ordinarily does not violate the Double Jeopardy Clause, we fail to see how an initial sentencing proceeding could do so.
We have also upheld the use of prior convictions to enhance sentences for subsequent convictions, even though this means a defendant must, in a certain sense, relitigate in a
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