ABSTRACT
David Allen Sattazahn and an accomplice had killed a restaurant manager during the commission of a robbery. After he was convicted, Sattazahn appealed, and the Pennsylvania appellate court ordered a new trial after finding the trial judge's instructions in the first trial were defective. Justice Antonin Scalia pointed out that Sattazahn had initiated the appeal of his first conviction and that in this case the jury had not imposed the original life sentence in the sentencing phase of the trial; rather the sentence was a default judgment based on the hung jury. Juries have unique roles in capital cases, and had a jury imposed a life sentence in Sattazahn's first trial, it would stand, but that had not happened. Acknowledging that the specific issue in the case was "genuinely debatable," Justice Ginsburg believed that the double jeopardy provision should have protected Sattazahn.
