  We consider Hamiltonian systems with symmetry, and relative equilibria with
isotropy subgroup of positive dimension. The stability of such relative
equilibria has been studied by Ortega and Ratiu and by Lerman and Singer. In
both papers the authors give sufficient conditions for stability which require
first determining a splitting of a subspace of the Lie algebra of the symmetry
group, with different splittings giving different criteria. In this note we
remove this splitting construction and so provide a more general and more
easily computed criterion for stability. The result is also extended to apply
to systems whose momentum map is not coadjoint equivariant.
