See the data url attached. The vertical component of 'border-spacing' is doubled between rows that are part of different row-groups. In the test case, the first row is in a <thead> and the latter two are in a <tbody>, so the gap between the first and second row is 20px, while the gap between the second and third is 10px, which is what is actually set in the CSS. (I suspect we're using machinery similar or identical to margin collapsing, and making row groups prevent collapsing across themselves.)
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 20040 ***