In Monge v. California, 524 U.S. 721 (1998), a sharply divided Supreme Court held that the double jeopardy clause does not bar retrial on a prior conviction allegation in the noncapital sentencing context. 524 U.S. at 734. There the trial judge had found that the defendant had two prior convictions for "serious" felonies and sentenced Monge under California's "three strikes" law. Id. at 725. An intermediate appellate court, however, found that the sentencing proceeding did not contain proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant had personally inflicted great bodily injury or used a deadly weapon during one of these prior offenses and that double jeopardy principles forbade the state from a retrial on the enhancement. Id. at 725-26. The Supreme Court disagreed, noting that "historically we have found double jeopardy protections inapplicable to sentencing proceedings ... because the determinations at issue do not place a defendant in jeopardy for an 'offense.'" Id. at 728. Sentencing decisions favorable to a defendant, therefore, cannot generally be analogized to an acquittal of a criminal offense which would invoke the double jeopardy bar. Id. at 729. The Court held: "We have held that where an appeals court overturns a conviction on the ground that the prosecution proffered insufficient evidence of guilt, that finding is comparable to an acquittal, and the Double Jeopardy Clause precludes a second trial. ... Where a similar failure of proof occurs in a sentencing hearing, however, the analogy is inapt. The pronouncement of sentence simply does not 'have the qualitites of constitutional finality that attend an acquittal.'" Id.