Not until 1981 (in an LDF-assisted case) did the Supreme Court rule that such a possibility discouraged appeal and “deterred the assertion of constitutional rights.” In essence, then, the Supreme Court interpreted a less-than-death sentence as an “acquittal” by the jury of “whatever was necessary to impose the death sentence” in the first trial, and thus ruled, under the double jeopardy clause of the Fifth Amendment, that an appellant could not subsequently be sentenced to death in a second trial. In 1949, though, a legal misstep in the appellate process could send Charles Greenlee from a work
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