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But they still went back and were in further deliberation, having never made an official acquittal, as was the MAJORITY opinion.

Did you even read the majority opinion? The constitution was given short shrift by Roberts and his whole decision relied on his own personal opinion of what constitutes a "verdict". Sotomayor wrote a classic argument for the original intent of the constitution. Sotomayor argued for the Constitution. Roberts argued for some form of procedural correctness and ignored the words of the constitution.

Read both opinions and then ask yourself which opinion sounded like it was written by a Justice who believes in Original intent.

Roberts wrote the opinion, 5 others agreed. Double jeopardy kicks in when it involves a legitimate acquittal, which I don’t believe ever existed. Just because a jury foreperson spoke in open court during deliberation and expressed the belief that the other jurors unanimously thought the defendant was not guilty of murder doesn’t constitute an acquittal. More deliberations followed after this statement and then the jury was dismissed. Each juror was never questioned as to their guilty or not guilty decision. Procedure must follow original intent, and I don’t see where this doesn’t.

Sotomayor argued for the Constitution.

That's an absurd statement on the face of it. I'll go with Scalia, Thomas, Alito, and Roberts, thank you very much. (Astonishingly, even Breyer stumbled into the correct decision this time.)

By the way, I have a theory that the three liberal Democrat women on this court voted the way they did because they see a conviction for the killing of a one-year old toddler as a threat, somehow, to partial birth abortion. I am pretty sure there's a tie-in to abortion.

But the Constitution has nothing to do with the way these three morons voted. The very idea is laughable.

Double-jeopardy is a concept that protects an individual AFTER a verdict has been reached.

Actually, it has been held in some cases to attach as soon as the prosecutor makes his opening statements. If it didn't, a prosecutor whose witness got caught in a lie could (with a friendly judge) have a "mistrial" declared, giving his witness another chance to get his story straight.

I don't know exactly what arguments were made by the petitioner and respondent in this case, and I recognize that it is bad for the Supreme Court to make binding decisions based upon arguments not presented before the Court. I do wish that the Supreme Court would be willing to dismiss cases without prejudice in cases where the losing side failed to make the best possible arguments and/or explicitly state in its decisions that it is not deciding the merits of potentially-better arguments. In a case like Lawrence v. Texas, for example, the proper ultimate outcome IMHO would most likely have been for the case to be remanded to trial court, with jury instructions requiring the state to prove things that it probably couldn't. A non-activist court could not issue such a remedy, however, without it being presented by a party before it. Given that restriction, the Court should have offered the defendants a chance to seek such a remedy, and given the state a chance to argue why they should not receive it. Had the defendants declined the Court's invitation to present such an argument, the Court should have found against the defendants, explicitly stating that its decision should in no way be construed to imply that it had made a determination on the argument the defendants could have--but refused to--raise.

Returning to the case at hand, the proper argument IMHO should have been that once the prosecutor has begun presenting his case, a defendant may only be retried after a mistrial if either:

The mistrial occurs as a result of something clearly outside the state's control (e.g. many members of the jury get the flu and need hospitalization), or
The mistrial is caused by the actions of the defense, or
The state can establish that the jury would not unanimously agree to acquit the defendant, even if allowed to do so

In cases where there is genuinely a hung jury for any particular charge, the state should have no problem finding at least one juror to go on record as stating that at least one juror was holding out for conviction on that charge. Conceptually, all twelve jurors should be willing to go on record as saying the holdout exists, but even if some are not, the fact that any would claim that a holdout exists would constitute proof that one does.

The fact that courts have not previously required any jurors to state on record that at least one juror was holding out for conviction does not mean all previous retrials after hung juries were invalid. Such retrials should be presumed valid in cases where the state can reasonably claim that it's likely some jurors would have refused to acquit on the charges for which the defendant is being retried. On the other hand, if jurors have stated in open court that they agreed that the defendant was not guilty of certain charges, such a statement would serve to rebut the state's claim that at least one juror would likely have held out for conviction.