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Nature of Suit Code: 530
Nature of Suit: Prisoner Petitions - Habeas Corpus
Cause of Action: 

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PUBLISH 

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS 

TENTH CIRCUIT 

JOSEPH ARTHUR CARBRAY, ) 

) 

Petitioner-Appellant, ) 

) 

v. ) No. 89-5152 

) 

RON CHAMPION, Warden, ) 

) 

Respondent-Appellee. ) 

FEB 2 8 1990 

ROBERT L, 1'IOECKER 

Clerk 

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the Northern District of Oklahoma 

(D.C. No. 89-C-363-B) 

Joseph Arthur Carbray, petitioner-appellant, prose. 

Robert H. Henry, Atty. Gen, A. Diane Hammons, Asst. Atty. Gen., 

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, for respondent-appellee. 

Before MCKAY, SEYMOUR, and EBEL, Circuit Judges. 

EBEL, Circuit Judge. 

After examining the briefs and appellate record, this panel 

has determined unanimously that oral argument would not materially 

assist the determination of this appeal. See Fed. R. App. P. 

34(a); 10th Cir. R. 34.1.9. Therefore, the case is ordered 

submitted without oral argument. 

Appellant Joseph Arthur Carbray is presently incarcerated in 

Oklahoma pursuant to a state conviction for the crime of assault 

Appellate Case: 89-5152 Document: 010110191831 Date Filed: 02/28/1990 Page: 1 
with a deadly weapon, after former conviction of a felony. The 

st?te trial judge imposed a 199-year sentence based on the 

recommendation of the jury. On direct appeal, the Oklahoma Court 

of Criminal Appeals affirmed the conviction but modified the 

sentence to a 75-year term of imprisonment because of its 

conclusion that there were prejudicial remarks made in the second 

stage of the trial proceedings, which was devoted to determination 

of sentence. See Carbray v. State, 545 P.2d 813, 815-16 (Okla. 

Crim. App. 1976). The prejudicial remarks were comments by the 

prosecuting attorney concerning the possibility of pardon and 

parole, which apparently had significantly reduced the amount of 

time that the appellant was incarcerated as a result of his 

earlier convictions. Because the Oklahoma Court of Criminal 

Appeals concluded that those references contributed to the jury's 

assessment of the particular punishment in this case, 1 

the court concluded that the sentence should be reduced from 199 

years to 75 years. 

We believe appellant has made a ''substantial showing of the 

denial of a federal right" necessary for the issuance of a 

certificate of probable cause pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2253. See 

Barefoot v. Estelle, 463 U.S. 880, 893 (1983). Accordingly, we 

grant appellant's application for a certificate of probable cause. 

1 Under Oklahoma law, ''upon the request of the defendant [the 

jury shall] assess and declare the punishment in their verdict 

within the limitations fixed by law, and the court shall render a 

judgment according to such verdict." Okla. Stat. Ann. tit. 22, 

§ 926 (1971). Where the punishment imposed by the jury is within 

the limitations fixed by law, the trial court is bound by the 

jury's determination and must enter judgment accordingly and 

without modification. See Luker v. State, 552 P.2d 715, 719 

(Okla. Crim. App. 1976)-. -

2 

Appellate Case: 89-5152 Document: 010110191831 Date Filed: 02/28/1990 Page: 2 
Appellant raises two issues in his petition for habeas corpus 

relief under 28 u.s.c. § 2254. First, appellant seeks to 

challenge the validity of his prior convictions which were used to 

enhance his present sentence. Appellant was sentenced pursuant to 

the following provision of the Oklahoma recidivism statute: 

Every person who, having been convicted of any 

offense punishable by imprisonment in the penitentiary, 

commits any crime after such conviction is punishable 

therefor as follows: 

1. If the offense of which such person is subsequently 

convicted is such that upon a first conviction an 

offender would be punishable by imprisonment in the 

penitentiary for any term exceeding five (5) years, such 

person is punishable by imprisonment in the penitentiary 

for a term not less than ten (10) years. 

Okla. Stat. tit. 21, § 51 (A)(l) (1981). Appellant argues that an 

invalid 1957 juvenile conviction was improperly used to enhance 

his sentence. 

Although the 1957 juvenile conviction was stricken from the 

information and was not presented to the jury in the sentencing 

phase, appellant argues that four intervening felony convictions 

(between the 1957 juvenile conviction and his current conviction) 

resulted from the 1957 juvenile conviction. Appellant contends 

that, because of the 1957 conviction, he was reluctant to testify 

on his own behalf in three of the subsequent felony cases. 

Additionally, appellant maintains that the fourth of those 

convictions resulted from a trial in which the 1957 conviction was 

used to impeach his testimony. 

"'Under Oklahoma law, only one prior conviction is necessary 

to enhance a defendant's sentence.'" Beavers v. Alford, 582 F. 

Supp. 1504, 1506 (W.D. Okla. 1984) (quoting Anderson v. Brown, 

unpublished No. 81-2247 (10th Cir. filed March 8, 1982)). We 

3 

Appellate Case: 89-5152 Document: 010110191831 Date Filed: 02/28/1990 Page: 3 
note that one of the convictions here were based on a guilty plea 

(Case No. 20-839). See R. Vol. I, Doc. 3, Addendum {Appellant's 

Brief before Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals at 8-9). Any 

connection between the 1957 conviction and the subsequent guilty 

plea conviction used to enhance appellant's sentence is too 

attenuated to amount to constitutional error. Therefore, we 

affirm the district court's ruling that the enhancement of 

appellant's sentence was not constitutional error. 

Appellant's second argument is that he was deprived of a 

liberty interest without due process when the Oklahoma Court of 

Criminal Appeals arbitrarily chose to resentence him to 75 years. 

See Carbray v. State, 545 P.2d 813, 815-16 (Okla. Crim. App. 

1976). 2 This question is controlled by Hicks v. Oklahoma, 447 

U.S. 343 (1980). 

In Hicks, the Supreme Court considered a due process 

challenge where the defendant was sentenced under a mandatory 

sentencing statute which was held to be unco~stitutional during 

the interval between the defendant's conviction and his direct 

appeal. Id. at 345. On direct appeal, the Oklahoma Court of 

Criminal Appeals affirmed the defendant's sentence under a 

2 The state argues that a prosecutor's comments at trial cannot 

form the basis for federal habeas corpus relief unless the trial 

was rendered so fundamentally unfair as to deny due process. 

Appellee's Brief at 4 (citing Darden v. Wainwright, 699 F.2d 1031, 

1034 (11th Cir. 1984)(subsequent history omitted)). However, the 

Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals concluded that the prosecutor's 

statements were sufficiently prejudicial to the defendant to merit 

modification of the sentence. That determination was never 

appealed, cannot be challenged here, and is a final judgment as to 

the state. The initial sentence of 199 years is no longer valid 

because of that ruling, and our issue here is only the validity of 

the new 75-year sentence. 

4 

Appellate Case: 89-5152 Document: 010110191831 Date Filed: 02/28/1990 Page: 4 
discretionary sentencing statute which would have allowed the jury 

to have imposed the same sentence that was imposed under the 

mandatory sentencing statute. Id. The defendant there asserted 

that that procedure violated his due process rights because 

Oklahoma law gave him the right to a jury's discretion in imposing 

punishment under the discretionary sentencing statute, and he was 

denied that right when the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals 

exercised its discretion in fashioning what it felt was 

appropriate punishment under the discretionary sentencing statute. 

Id. The Supreme Court agreed, stating: 

Where ••. a State has provided for the 

imposition of criminal punishment in the 

discretion of the trial jury, it is not 

correct to say that the defendant's interest 

in the exercise of that discretion is merely a 

matter of state procedural law. The defendant 

in such a case has a substantial and 

legitimate expectation that he will be 

deprived of his liberty only to the extent 

determined by the jury in the exercise of its 

statutory discretion, ..• and that liberty 

interest is one that the Fourteenth Amendment 

preserves against arbitrary deprivation by the 

State. 

Id. at 346 (citation omitted). 

Appellant argues that the modification of his sentence by the 

Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals deprived him of a liberty 

interest without due process of law because "[u]nder Oklahoma law 

a defendant has a statutory right to have his sentence set by the 

jury which finds him guilty." Clopton v. State, 742 P.2d 586, 587 

(Okla. Crim. App. 1987). See Dean v. State, 778 P.2d 476, 478 

(Okla. Crim. App. 1989); Okla. Stat. tit. 22, § 926 (1981). 

However, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals has held that 

''where the sentence has been modified to the minimum, the 

5 

Appellate Case: 89-5152 Document: 010110191831 Date Filed: 02/28/1990 Page: 5 
appellant has clearly suffered no prejudice from this Court's 

setting of the sentence, because the jury could not possibly have 

imposed a lesser punishment." Id. at 587. 

In Clopton, the jury was instructed that, if they found 

defendant guilty, under the Habitual Criminal Act the minimum 

sentence was a twenty year prison term. Id. On appeal, the 

Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals held that the jury should have 

been instructed to impose a sentence under the Uniform Controlled 

Substance Act. Id. The minimum sentence under that statute for 

defendant's offense was four years. Id. The Court of Criminal 

Appeals held that "[w]e must, therefore modify appellant's 

sentence to the minimum provided under the enhanced punishment 

provision of the Uniform Controlled Substance Act, which is four 

(4) years." Id. 3 

3 Shaw v. Johnson, 786 F.2d 993 (10th Cir.), cert. denied, 479 

U.S. 843 (1986), is not to the contrary. In Shaw, the defendant 

was originally convicted and sentenced by a jury that had been 

erroneously instructed that the minimum statutory sentence for the 

charged offense was twenty years. Id. at 997. The jury convicted 

the defendant and imposed a sentenceof life imprisonment. Id. 

On appeal, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals recognizedthat 

the correct minimum sentence was ten years and reduced the life 

sentence to forty-five years. Id. On appeal of the denial of his 

habeas corpus petition, this court held that defendant was not 

prejudiced by any error in the sentencing instruction because it 

was not likely to have affected the actual sentence in that case 

since the jury had returned a life sentence. Id. at 998. 

Therefore, any erroneous instruction concerningthe minimum 

sentence possible was harmless error. 

In Shaw, the court said "a jury did fix [the defendant's] 

sentence~ the maximum allowed by statute, and the Oklahoma 

Court of Criminal Appeals, acting under its discretionary 

statutory authority, reduced the sentence fixed by the jury. Such 

is permissible under Oklahoma law and does not, in our view, 

offend the federal constitution in any manner." Id. In light of 

Clopton (which came after Shaw), it now appears to be Oklahoma law 

that where prejudicial error occurs in the sentencing stage, on 

appeal the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals can only modify a 

[Footnote continued .•. ] 

Appellate Case: 89-5152 Document: 010110191831 Date Filed: 02/28/1990 Page: 6 
Here, there has been no showing that 75 years is the least 

amount of time that this appellant could have received for his 

conviction in the present case. It appears from the transcript 

that the minimum sentence which the jury could have imposed for 

assault with a deadly weapon by a defendant formerly convicted of 

a felony was ten years of confinement. R. Vol. II, Tr. at 234. 

Following Hicks, we conclude that appellant was deprived of 

_his due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment when the 

Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals arbitrarily exercised its 

discretion in sentencing appellant to a 75 year prison term. That 

court was empowered only to reduce appellant's sentence to the 

statutory minimum (which appears from the record to have been ten 

years) or to remand the case for a new trial before a second jury 

so that appellant's statutory right to be sentenced by the 

convicting jury could be fully vindicated. Compare Dean, 778 P.2d 

at 478; Clopton, 742 P.2d at 587 with Nipps v. State, 626 P.2d 

1349, 1350 (Okla. Crim. App. 1981). 

The district court erred in denying appellant's petition for 

habeas corpus on this claim. Because it appears from the record 

that appellant has fully served the minimum ten-year sentence that 

the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals could have imposed, 

appellant must be released from custody unless either (1) he is in 

custody pursuant to a conviction other than that here at issue or 

(2) the state of Oklahoma elects to try him a second time. 

[ ..• footnote continued] 

defendant's sentence to the minimum sentence which the jury could 

have imposed. 

7 

Appellate Case: 89-5152 Document: 010110191831 Date Filed: 02/28/1990 Page: 7 
Accordingly, the judgment of the district court is REVERSED, 

and this case is REMANDED to the district court with orders that 

the writ of habeas corpus be conditionally granted releasing 

defendant from custody unless within ninety days from the date of 

this order the state of Oklahoma commences a second trial or it is 

established that the appellant is in custody for other offenses. 

8 

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