Source: https://openjurist.org/381/f2d/636
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 18:25:31+00:00

Document:
STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA, Appellant.
Theodore C. Brown, Jr., Staff Atty., Office of Atty. Gen. of North Carolina (T. Wade Bruton, Atty. Gen. of North Carolina, on brief), for appellant.
William W. Van Alstyne, Durham, N. C. (Court-assigned counsel), for appellee.
Before SOBELOFF, J. SPENCER BELL* and WINTER, Circuit Judges.
The question raised by this appeal is whether a defendant may be sentenced to a longer term of imprisonment at his second trial than he received after his first conviction, vacated on constitutional grounds.
Unrepresented by counsel, the petitioner, Eddie W. Patton, was tried in October, 1960 and convicted of armed robbery after a plea of nolo contendere, entered at the close of the State's evidence. He was sentenced to prison for a term of twenty years. No appeal was taken, but in April 1964, Patton applied for a state post-conviction hearing, and on the basis of the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335, 83 S.Ct. 792, 9 L. Ed.2d 799 (1963), was awarded a new trial.
Patton remained in custody, and on February 17, 1965, after tendering a plea of not guilty, he was again convicted by jury on the original indictment. This time he had the assistance of counsel, who called the court's attention to the fact that the defendant had been continuously imprisoned from June 10, 1960 and had already served nearly five years for the offense. Although the trial judge paid lip service to the idea of crediting Patton with that portion of the initial twenty-year sentence already served, he actually increased Patton's punishment by imposing, in effect, a twenty-five-year sentence and then deducting five years for the time served.1 Thus, as a result of seeking and obtaining a new trial, the prisoner, who originally would have been eligible for parole in October 1965, now, it is agreed, will not become eligible until February 1970.
Regardless of whether the action of the sentencing judge is verbalized as a twenty-year sentence without credit for the five years already served, or as a twenty-five-year sentence with credit, the practical effect of the second judge's sentence is to compel the defendant to serve five years longer to become eligible for parole, than he would have been required to serve had he not asserted his constitutional right to a fair trial.
Patton applied in August 1965 to the District Court for a writ of habeas corpus, contending that a harsher sentence following a second conviction for the same offense, after the initial conviction has been vacated on constitutional grounds, is a denial of due process of law; is inconsistent with the prohibition against double jeopardy; and is a denial of equal protection of the law. The District Court held Patton's sentence unconstitutional on the ground that the increased punishment violated the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. Patton v. North Carolina, 256 F.Supp. 225 (W.D. N.C.1966).
The District Court held that Patton's punishment could not be increased unless evidence justifying a harsher sentence appeared in the record, and that the State must bear the burden of showing that such facts were introduced at the second trial, since "where the record disclose[d] no colorable reason for harsher punishment," the effect would be to inhibit the constitutional right to seek a new trial.12 256 F.Supp. at 236. We agree with the District Court that it is an impossible task for the prisoner to prove improper motivation of the trial judge. It is equally impossible, and most distasteful, for federal courts to pry into the sentencing judge's motivation to ascertain whether vindictiveness played a part.
We do not think, however, that a defendant's rights are adequately protected even if a second sentencing judge is restricted to increasing sentence only on the basis of new evidence. We are in accord with the First Circuit, which has recently held that a sentence may not be increased following a successful appeal, even where additional testimony has been introduced at the second trial.
Marano v. United States, 374 F.2d 583, 585 (1st Cir. Mar. 23, 1967). Contra, Starner v. Russell, 378 F.2d 808 (3rd Cir. May 25, 1967).
An analogy may be drawn between the solution adopted by the Supreme Court in Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335, 83 S.Ct. 792, 9 L.Ed.2d 799 (1963), in response to the problems raised by Betts v. Brady, 316 U.S. 455, 62 S.Ct. 1252, 86 L.Ed. 1595 (1942), and the issue here.13 The Court had earlier held in Betts that whether the conviction of an unrepresented defendant was a denial of due process depended upon whether "special circumstances" existed which would, in a particular case, "constitute a denial of fundamental fairness." 316 U.S. at 462, 62 S.Ct. at 1256. But in Gideon, there was forthright recognition that to require such a showing, in an area in which the chance of undetectable prejudice is so great, was too heavy a burden to cast upon an accused. The controlling point was not that the absence of counsel necessarily prejudiced the defendant, but that it created the opportunity for unfairness. For this reason, the Gideon Court made the presumption of injury irrebutable.
Similarly, improper motivation is characteristically a force of low visibility. In order to prevent abuses, the fixed policy must necessarily be that the new sentence shall not exceed the old. Seldom will this policy result in inadequate punishment. Against the rare possibility of inadequacy, greater weight must be given to the danger inherent in a system permitting stiffer sentences on retrial — that the added punishment was in reaction to the defendant's temerity in attacking the original conviction. Even the appearance of improper motivation is a disservice to the administration of justice.
It is clear, therefore, that the Court was concerned in Green only with that aspect of double jeopardy which prohibits multiple prosecutions for the same offense, and was not faced with the precise question that is before us — whether a harsher punishment following retrial for the same offense is prohibited by the double jeopardy clause.
Defendant recognizes, and we agree, that to maintain that he was "acquitted" at the first trial of any penalty greater than twenty years, is as much a fiction as that he has "waived" the benefit of his initial sentence by appealing his conviction.29 For this reason, we do not rest solely on the "implied acquittal" doctrine, preferring to emphasize a somewhat different aspect of double jeopardy — the prohibition against multiple punishment. See Ex parte Lange, 85 U. S. (18 Wall.) 163, 21 L.Ed. 872 (1873).30 It is this aspect which has been consistently relied upon to prohibit an increase in a defendant's sentence, once service has commenced. E.g., Ex parte Lange, supra; United States v. Benz, 282 U.S. 304, 307, 51 S.Ct. 113, 75 L. Ed. 354 (1931); United States v. Sacco, 367 F.2d 368 (2d Cir. 1966); United States v. Adams, 362 F.2d 210 (6th Cir. 1966); Kennedy v. United States, 330 F.2d 26 (9th Cir. 1964).
We perceive no constitutionally significant distinction between the increases prohibited in the cases cited above and an increase in punishment following retrial. Thus, unless a defendant is held to waive this double jeopardy protection in seeking a new trial, a harsher penalty may not be imposed. And we have already declared, in Part II of this opinion, that we decline to predicate a prisoner's exercise of his right to seek a new trial on the fiction that he has "waived" the benefits of his initial sentence, because of the restrictive effect this has on access to post-conviction remedies.31 This is in accord with this circuit's decision in United States v. Walker, 346 F.2d 428 (4th Cir. 1965), that, in seeking correction of an erroneous sentence,32 a defendant does not waive his double jeopardy right not to be subjected to multiple punishment. See Walsh v. United States, 374 F.2d 421, 426 (9th Cir. 1967) and Ekberg v. United States, 167 F.2d 380, 388 (1st Cir. 1948), discussed more extensively in Whaley v. North Carolina, 4 Cir., 379 F.2d 221 (decided this day).
To summarize, we conclude that increasing Patton's punishment after the reversal of his initial conviction constitutes a violation of his Fourteenth Amendment rights in that it exacted an unconstitutional condition to the exercise of his right to a fair trial, arbitrarily denied him the equal protection of the law, and placed him twice in jeopardy of punishment for the same offense.
"THE COURT: * * * I would give you five more years than what I am giving you, but I am allowing you credit for the time that you have served. Judgment of the Court is that the Defendant be imprisoned in the State's Prison for a term of twenty years * * *."
"THE COURT: Are you referring about the prior sentence that was imposed on you?
THE COURT: That was wiped off.
DEFENDANT: Yes, I understand that.
THE COURT: Mr. Patton, as your motion, because you moved that it be — and alleged and the Court found that your constitutional rights had been violated upon your motion, and that was all done away with. We are now confronted with a new day."
"It is hardly realistic to say that nine months in the State prison amount to nothing — that since the petitioner `should not have been imprisoned as he was, he was not imprisoned at all.' [Citation omitted.] Moreover, * * * the time served before the reversal of the sentence might in some other case be so long that glaring and intolerable injustice would result if the time served on a first sentence should not be taken into account in imposing a second sentence. It is not even technically correct to say that the first sentence must now be deemed to have been a nullity. It was not a nullity when it was imposed or while it was being served."
Id. at 685, 142 S.E.2d at 636. (Emphasis supplied by North Carolina Supreme Court.) The North Carolina court added that "[t]he hard fact of his [Weaver's] actual service of sentence * * * cannot be ignored." Id. at 686, 142 S.E.2d at 637. Weaver, however, was a case in which the second sentence imposed on the defendant was the maximum allowable under the statute, so that added to the time already served under the invalid first sentence, the punishment exceeded the statutory maximum.
I am in the Mecklenburg County jail. Mr. _____ chose to re-try me as I knew he would.
Sir the other defendant in this case was set free after serving 15 months of his sentence, I have served 34 months and now I am to be tried again and with all probility I will receive a heavier sentence then before as you know sir my sentence at the first trile was 20 to 30 years. I know it is usuelly the courts prosedure to give a larger sentence when a new trile is granted I guess this is to discourage Petitioners.
Your Honor, I don't want a new trile I am afraid of more time * * *.
Your Honor, I know you have tried to help me and God knows I apreceate this but please sir don't let the state re-try me if there is any way you can prevent it.
7a. Cf. State v. Wolf, 46 N.J. 301, 306, 216 A.2d 586, 590-591 (1966). There the defendant, convicted of first-degree murder with a jury recommendation of life imprisonment, succeeded in obtaining a reversal on the basis of certain errors (non-constitutional in nature) committed at the trial. In holding that the State was barred on retrial from again seeking the death penalty, the Supreme Court of New Jersey found it unnecessary to decide whether the double jeopardy clause of either the federal or the state constitution, or the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was applicable. The unanimous decision was based instead on certain "procedural policies" which were "of the essence of the administration of criminal justice."
InGreen, it was argued that the defendant had "waived" the benefit of his first trial, in which he escaped conviction for a higher offense, as a condition for appealing his conviction of the lesser one. See United States ex rel. Hetenyi v. Wilkins, 348 F.2d 844, 859 (2d Cir. 1965), where an analogous argument was rejected with the observation that it "ignore[s] the elementary psychological realities" and presumes "a barter theory of fairness"; and United States v. Walker, 346 F.2d 428 (4th Cir. 1965), declaring that a defendant's motion to vacate his defective sentence could not be considered a waiver.
"In reality, whatever his words to the Court, Walker obviously did not desire to chance a greater term. If in law his wish `to vacate' embraced that unnatural decision, he should not be held to it."
The Supreme Court has on numerous occasions articulated its concern that access to post-conviction remedies be unfettered. See, e.g., Fay v. Noia, supra; Douglas v. State of California, 372 U.S. 353, 83 S.Ct. 814, 9 L.Ed.2d 811 (1963); Green v. United States, supra; Griffin v. People of State of Illinois, 351 U.S. 12, 76 S.Ct. 585, 100 L.Ed. 891 (1956); Cichos v. State of Indiana, 385 U.S. 1020, 87 S.Ct. 699, 17 L.Ed.2d 559 (Nov. 14, 1966) (Fortas, J., dissenting); United States v. Ewell, 383 U.S. 116, 126, 86 S.Ct. 773, 15 L.Ed.2d 627 (1966) (Fortas, J., dissenting).
"Denying a benefit because of the exercise of a right in effect penalizes that exercise, making it tantamount to a crime. Punishing constitutionally protected activities seems clearly a violation of substantive due process."
Note, Unconstitutional Conditions, 73 Harv.L.Rev. 1595, 1599-1600 (1960).
12a. Marano held flatly that it would be improper for the court to increase the sentence on the basis of additional testimony which came out at the new trial, but suggested by way of dictum that in some circumstances it might not be "inappropriate for the court to take subsequent events [as disclosed in a new presentence report] into consideration, both good and bad." As to the dictum, we do not agree, for the reasons developed in the text of this opinion.
Id. at 190, 85 S.Ct. at 287 [quoting from Gulf, C. & S. F. R. Co. v. Ellis, 165 U.S. 150, 155, 17 S.Ct. 255, 41 L.Ed. 666 (1897)]. See also, e.g., Morey v. Doud, 354 U.S. 457, 77 S.Ct. 1344, 1 L.Ed.2d 1485 (1957); Skinner v. State of Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535, 62 S.Ct. 1110, 86 L. Ed. 1655 (1942).
"Is there any rational justification for punishing this defendant substantially more than others who committed the same offense, simply because this defendant was not given a fair trial or was not properly sentenced the first time?"
"It scarcely needs argument to show that the circumstance that the defendant has received treatment in the first instance which was violative of the Constitution is not a valid reason for making the distinction. Nor is it a policy congruent with our constitution to permit courts to deny credit for time already served, and thus discourage the use of review procedures."
"It is difficult to understand how the fundamental unfairness inherent in allowing a prosecutor to `do better a second time' (Mr. Justice Frankfurter, concurring in Brock v. North Carolina, supra, 344 U.S.  at 429, 73 S.Ct. , at 351, 97 L.Ed. 456) is mitigated by conditioning this second chance on a successful appeal by the accused."
"[N]either the fact that a State may deny the right of appeal altogether nor the right of a State to make an appropriate classification, * * * nor the right of a State to lay down conditions it deems appropriate for criminal appeals, sanctions differentiations by a State that have no relation to a rational policy of criminal appeal or authorizes the imposition of conditions that offend the deepest presuppositions of our society."
351 U.S. at 21-22, 76 S.Ct. at 592. See also Douglas v. State of California, 372 U.S. 353, 365, 83 S.Ct. 814, 9 L.Ed.2d 811 (1963) (dissenting opinion).
"[i]s that kind of double jeopardy * * * [which] has subjected him [to] a hardship so acute and shocking that our policy will not endure it * * * [and] violate[s] those `fundamental principles of liberty and justice which lie at the base of all our civil and political institutions.'"
Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319, 328, 58 S.Ct. 149, 153, 82 L.Ed. 288 (1937).
"As a practical matter and on any basis of human values, it is scarcely possible to distinguish a case in which the defendant is convicted of a greater offense from one in which he is convicted of an offense that has the same name as that of which he was previously convicted but carries a significantly different punishment, namely death rather than imprisonment."
The California courts have not limited the application of the double jeopardy provision to cases in which the prosecutor has sought on the second trial to raise the punishment to the death penalty, but have also followed the rule laid down in Henderson where longer prison sentences are involved. People v. Nanga-Parbet Ali, 57 Cal.Rptr. 348, 424 P.2d 932 (Calif.Sup. Ct. Mar. 3, 1967); In re Ferguson, 233 Cal.App.2d 79, 43 Cal.Rptr. 325 (1965).
[T]he Constitution was designed as much to prevent the criminal from being twice punished for the same offence as being twice tried for it."
"Although the decision in Green was premised upon the Double Jeopardy Clause, its teaching has another dimension. Green also demonstrates this Court's concern to protect the right of appeal in criminal cases."
See also Van Alstyne, op. cit. supra, note 17, at 632.

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