Sattazahn v. Pennsylvania, 537 U.S. 101, 16 (2003)

Page:   Index   Previous  9  10  11  12  13  14  15  16  17  18  19  20  21  22  23  Next

116

SATTAZAHN v. PENNSYLVANIA

Opinion of O'Connor, J.

tioner in the life sentence imposed after his first capital-sentencing proceeding was somehow immutable. And he was "deprived" of any such interest only by operation of the "process" he invoked to invalidate the underlying first-degree murder conviction on which it was based.

At bottom, petitioner's due-process claim is nothing more than his double-jeopardy claim in different clothing. As we have said:

"The Bill of Rights speaks in explicit terms to many aspects of criminal procedure, and the expansion of those constitutional guarantees under the open-ended rubric of the Due Process Clause invites undue interference with both considered legislative judgments and the careful balance that the Constitution strikes between liberty and order." Medina v. California, 505 U. S. 437, 443 (1992).

We decline petitioner's invitation to hold that the Due Process Clause provides greater double-jeopardy protection than does the Double Jeopardy Clause.

* * *

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court correctly concluded that neither the Fifth Amendment's Double Jeopardy Clause nor the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause barred Pennsylvania from seeking the death penalty against petitioner on retrial. The judgment of that court is, therefore,

Affirmed.

Justice O'Connor, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.

I join Parts I, II, IV, and V of the Court's opinion in this case. I do not join Part III, which would further extend the reach of Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U. S. 466 (2000), because I continue to believe that case was wrongly decided. See id., at 523-553 (O'Connor, J., dissenting); see also Ring

Page:   Index   Previous  9  10  11  12  13  14  15  16  17  18  19  20  21  22  23  Next

Last modified: October 4, 2007