Opinion ID: 1799201
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Double jeopardyprior violent felony

Text: Although we hold that the Trial Court should not have submitted the prior violent felony aggravating circumstance to the jury due to insufficiency of the evidence, we briefly address Mr. Greene's fifth point on appeal, which also concerns that aggravating circumstance. Mr. Green contends that the Double Jeopardy provision of the United States Constitution, presumably Amendment 5 or 14, precluded the State from showing, in the resentencing hearing, that he had committed a prior violent felony by evidence not introduced at his first sentencing proceeding. The State's response is that no objection was made at the time the testimony by Ms. Blankenship and Mr. Cabe was presented and that the Double Jeopardy issue is therefore not preserved. Mr. Green brought the argument to the attention of the Trial Court through a pretrial motion to prohibit the State from establishing that aggravating circumstance through evidence not introduced at his first sentencing proceeding. The argument is therefore preserved for review, but we hold that it is meritless. If we had held in Greene I that the evidence presented by the State in the first trial was legally insufficient to justify the imposition of the death penalty, and had thereby acquitted Mr. Greene of the death penalty, the Double Jeopardy Clause would have barred a second death-penalty proceeding. See Poland v. Arizona, 476 U.S. 147, 106 S.Ct. 1749, 90 L.Ed.2d 123 (1986); Bullington v. Missouri, 451 U.S. 430, 101 S.Ct. 1852, 68 L.Ed.2d 270 (1981). Our decision in Greene I , however, was not based upon insufficiency of the evidence. Rather, we reversed on the basis of Johnson v. Mississippi, 486 U.S. 578, 108 S.Ct. 1981, 100 L.Ed.2d 575 (1988), a decision by the United States Supreme Court that was followed by this Court in Sanders v. State, 308 Ark. 178, 824 S.W.2d 353 (1992). Those cases hold that a death sentence that is predicated upon proof of the defendant's conviction of an unrelated prior violent felony must be vacated if the prior conviction is reversed subsequent to the imposition of the death penalty. In Greene I , we did not hold that the evidence was insufficient to justify the imposition of the death penalty. Neither the subsequent reversal of the North Carolina conviction, nor our setting aside Mr. Greene's death sentence in Greene I , acquitted Mr. Greene for Double Jeopardy purposes. Thus, the State was free to reassert the prior violent felony charge in the resentencing hearing and introduce new evidence in support of it.