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Syllabus

MONGE v. CALIFORNIA

certiorari to the supreme court of california

No. 97–6146. Argued April 28, 1998—Decided June 26, 1998

California’s “three-strikes” law provides, among other things, that a
convicted felon with one prior conviction for a serious felony—such as
assault where the felon inﬂicted great bodily injury or personally used
a dangerous or deadly weapon—will have his prison term doubled.
Under California law, a number of procedural safeguards surround the
assessment of prior conviction allegations: Defendants may invoke the
right to a jury trial, the right to confront witnesses, and the privilege
against self-incrimination; the prosecution must prove the allegations
beyond a reasonable doubt; and the rules of evidence apply. After peti-
tioner was convicted on three counts of violating California drug laws,
the State sought to have his sentence enhanced based on a previous
assault conviction and the resulting prison term. At the sentencing
hearing, the prosecutor asserted that petitioner had personally used a
stick during the assault, but introduced into evidence only a prison rec-
ord showing that he had been convicted of assault with a deadly weapon
and had served a prison term for the offense. Finding both sentencing
allegations true, the trial court, as relevant here, doubled petitioner’s
sentence on count one and added a 1-year enhancement for the prior
prison term. On appeal, the California Court of Appeal ruled that the
evidence was insufﬁcient to trigger the sentence enhancement because
the prior conviction allegations were not proved beyond a reasonable
doubt, and that a remand for retrial on the sentence enhancement would
violate double jeopardy principles. The State Supreme Court reversed
the double jeopardy ruling, with a plurality holding that the Double
Jeopardy Clause, though applicable in the capital sentencing context,
see Bullington v. Missouri, 451 U. S. 430, does not extend to noncapital
sentencing proceedings.

Held: The Double Jeopardy Clause does not preclude retrial on a
prior conviction allegation in noncapital sentencing proceedings.
Pp. 727–734.

(a) Historically, this Court has found double jeopardy protections
inapplicable to sentencing proceedings because the determinations at
issue do not place a defendant in jeopardy for an “offense.” Nor can
sentencing determinations generally be analogized to an acquittal. See
In Bullington, this
United States v. DiFrancesco, 449 U. S. 117, 134.