For some reason, the retain/release behavior in the following code has me completely baffled.

selectedImage = [UIImage imageNamed:@"icon_72.png"];
[selectedImage release];

This should break but does not. Why? I thought imageNamed autoreleased itself which means the release here is redundant and should break when the autorelease occurs.

Here are snippets relevant to selectedImage from the .h and .m files:

@property (nonatomic, readonly) UIImage *selectedImage;
@synthesize delegate, selectedImage, spacerBottom, currentIndex;

Other notes, this does break:

selectedImage = [UIImage imageNamed:@"icon_72.png"];
[selectedImage release];
[selectedImage release];
//objc[55541]: FREED(id): message release sent to freed object=0x59245b0
//Program received signal:  “EXC_BAD_INSTRUCTION”.

As does this:

selectedImage = [UIImage imageNamed:@"icon_72.png"];
[selectedImage release];
[selectedImage autorelease];
//objc[55403]: FREED(id): message autorelease sent to freed object=0x59b54c0
//Program received signal:  “EXC_BAD_INSTRUCTION”.

And so does the following:

selectedImage = [UIImage imageNamed:@"icon_72.png"];
[selectedImage autorelease];
[selectedImage release];
//objc[55264]: FREED(id): message release sent to freed object=0x592c9a0
//Program received signal:  “EXC_BAD_INSTRUCTION”.

And so does this:

selectedImage = [UIImage imageNamed:@"icon_72.png"];
[selectedImage autorelease];
[selectedImage autorelease];
//objc[55635]: FREED(id): message release sent to freed object=0x5b305d0
//Program received signal:  “EXC_BAD_INSTRUCTION”.