Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 778

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Unit: $U98

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Cite as: 524 U. S. 721 (1998)

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Opinion of the Court

a capital sentencing proceeding.” Caspari, 510 U. S., at 392;
see also Goldhammer, 474 U. S., at 30 (“[T]he decisions of
this Court ‘clearly establish that a sentenc[ing in a noncapi-
tal case] does not have the qualities of constitutional ﬁnality
that attend an acquittal’ ”) (quoting DiFrancesco, 449 U. S.,
at 134).
In addition, we have cited Bullington as an exam-
ple of the heightened procedural protections accorded capital
defendants. See Strickland, supra, at 686–687 (“A capital
sentencing proceeding . . . is sufﬁciently like a trial in its
adversarial format and in the existence of standards for deci-
sion, see [Bullington], that counsel’s role in the proceeding
is comparable to counsel’s role at trial”).

In an attempt to minimize the relevance of the death pen-
alty context, petitioner argues that the application of double
jeopardy principles turns on the nature rather than the con-
sequences of the proceeding. For example, petitioner notes
that Bullington did not overrule the Court’s decision in
Stroud v. United States, 251 U. S. 15 (1919)—which found
the double jeopardy bar inapplicable to a particular capital
sentencing proceeding—but rather distinguished it on the
ground that the proceeding at issue did not bear the hall-
marks of a trial on guilt or innocence. Stroud predates our
decisions in Furman v. Georgia, 408 U. S. 238 (1972) (per
curiam), and Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U. S. 153 (1976) ( joint
opinion of Stewart, Powell, and Stevens, JJ.); it was decided
at a time when “no signiﬁcant constitutional difference be-
tween the death penalty and lesser punishments for crime
had been expressly recognized by this Court.” See Gard-
ner, supra, at 357 (opinion of Stevens, J.). Consequently,
the capital sentencing procedures at issue in Stroud did not
resemble a trial, and the Court confronted a different ques-
tion in that case. The holding of Bullington turns on both
the trial-like proceedings at issue and the severity of the
penalty at stake. That the Court focused on the absence of
procedural safeguards in distinguishing an earlier capital