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524US2

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MONGE v. CALIFORNIA

Opinion of the Court

evidence was insufﬁcient to trigger the sentence enhance-
ment and that a remand for retrial on the allegation would
violate double jeopardy principles.

The California Supreme Court reversed the Court of Ap-
peal’s ruling that the Double Jeopardy Clause bars retrial
of prior conviction allegations. The three-justice plurality
noted this Court’s traditional reluctance to apply double
jeopardy principles to sentencing proceedings and concluded
that the exception recognized in Bullington, supra, did not
apply.
In Bullington, we held that a capital defendant who
had received a life sentence during a penalty phase that bore
“the hallmarks of [a] trial on guilt or innocence” could not be
resentenced to death upon retrial following appeal. Here,
the plurality acknowledged that California’s proceedings to
assess the truth of prior conviction allegations have the hall-
marks of a trial, but it found Bullington distinguishable on
several grounds. First, the plurality cited statements by
this Court indicating that Bullington’s rationale is conﬁned
to the unique circumstances of capital cases. See 16 Cal.
4th, at 836–837, 941 P. 2d, at 1128 (citing Caspari v. Bohlen,
510 U. S. 383, 392 (1994); Pennsylvania v. Goldhammer, 474
U. S. 28, 30 (1985) (per curiam)). The plurality also rea-
soned that capital sentencing procedures are mandated by
the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Federal Constitu-
tion, whereas the procedural protections accorded in Califor-
nia’s sentence enhancement proceedings rest on statutory
grounds.
16 Cal. 4th, at 837, 941 P. 2d, at 1128. The plural-
ity then cited the breadth and subjectivity of the factual de-
terminations at issue in the capital sentencing context, as
well as the ﬁnancial and emotional burden that the penalty
phase of a capital case places on a defendant.
Id., at 838–
839, 941 P. 2d, at 1129. Finally, the plurality explained that
a qualifying strike involves a ﬁnding of a particular “status”
that may be made from the record of the prior conviction,
while the jury’s sentencing determination in a capital case
“depends on the speciﬁc facts of the defendant’s present