Case Name: STATE of Maine v. James E. VIOLETTE
Court: Maine Supreme Judicial Court
Jurisdiction: Maine
Decision Date: 1990-07-11
Citations: 576 A.2d 1359
Docket Number: 
Parties: STATE of Maine v. James E. VIOLETTE.
Judges: Before McKUSICK, C.J., and ROBERTS, WATHEN, GLASSMAN, CLIFFORD and COLLINS, JJ.
Reporter: West's Atlantic Reporter, Second Series
Volume: 576
Pages: 1359–1364

Head Matter:
STATE of Maine v. James E. VIOLETTE.
Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.
Argued May 30, 1990.
Decided July 11, 1990.
Mary Tousignant, Dist. Atty., Anne Jordan (orally), Deputy Dist. Atty., Alfred, for plaintiff.
Thomas Van Houten (orally), Wood & Van Houten, Sanford, for defendant.
Susan Parcels, Portland, amicus curiae for Maine Civil Liberties Union.
Before McKUSICK, C.J., and ROBERTS, WATHEN, GLASSMAN, CLIFFORD and COLLINS, JJ.

Opinion:
McKUSICK, Chief Justice.
At issue in this case is whether a new sentence imposed following a successful appeal of a criminal conviction and recon-viction after a new trial may, in the absence of any misconduct on the part of the defendant following his first sentencing, be more severe than the original sentence. In the specific circumstances of this case and consistently with our prior rulings in State v. Weeks, 267 A.2d 641 (Me.1970), State v. Palmer, 468 A.2d 985 (Me.1983), and State v. Keefe, 573 A.2d 20 (Me.1990), we answer that question in the negative.
In February 1988 defendant James E. Violette was tried and convicted by the District Court (Biddeford, Crowley, J.) of operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of intoxicating liquor. He was sentenced to sixty days in jail, all but thirty suspended, and nine months of probation. The court also suspended his driver's license for two years, ordered him to participate in the Department of Human Services' Multiple Offenders Program, and fined him $750. On appeal the Superior Court (York County, Fritzche, J.) vacated Viol-ette's conviction.
In May 1989, after a new trial in the District Court (Biddeford, Janelle, J.) at which he was represented by counsel, Viol-ette was again convicted of the same offense. The court, this time presided over by a different judge, sentenced Violette to six months in jail, all but forty-five days suspended, and one year of probation. The court further suspended Violette's driver's license for two years, ordered him to participate in the Multiple Offenders Program and also to complete substance abuse coun seling to the satisfaction of his probation officer, required him to abstain from drinking or possessing intoxicating liquor as a condition of probation, and fined him $750. Violette appealed his second conviction and sentence to the Superior Court (York County, Brodrick, J.), which affirmed the conviction but vacated the sentence and remanded for resentencing, on the ground that the District Court erred in enhancing Violette's sentence on his second conviction. In so ruling the court relied upon State v. Weeks and State v. Palmer, in which we squarely held that an increase in punishment not related to identifiable misconduct on the part of the defendant after the original sentencing proceeding violates due process. See, e.g., State v. Palmer, 468 A.2d at 989.
In State v. Weeks, we adopted as a matter of state constitutional law the Supreme Court's federal constitutional ruling in North Carolina v. Pearce, 395 U.S. 711, 89 S.Ct. 2072, 23 L.Ed.2d 656 (1969). In Weeks we summarized the Pearce rule as follows:
(1) due process of law requires that vindictiveness against a defendant for having successfully attacked his first conviction must play no part in the sentence he receives after a new trial upon reconviction; (2) to assure the absence of any such motivation of vindictiveness, the reasons underlying the giving of a more severe sentence upon a defendant after a new trial and upon resentence must affirmatively appear of record; and (3) those reasons must be based on objective information concerning identifiable conduct on the part of the defendant occurring after the time of the original sentencing proceeding.
State v. Weeks, 267 A.2d at 646. We refused to set up an absolute bar against heavier second sentences, noting that given the problems of recidivism and crimes committed while criminal defendants were free on bail pending new trial or sentencing, it is important that the resentencing court enjoy wide latitude in fixing sentences within permissible constitutional limits. Id. at 647. In so ruling, we gave emphasis to the third prong of the test set up by Pearce, that the reasons for an enhanced sentence must be based on recidivism by the defendant after the first sentencing proceeding. Later, in State v. Palmer, we reaffirmed our commitment to that rule and vacated an enhanced second sentence because the increase in punishment was not related to identifiable misconduct following the original sentencing proceeding. Again, we gave emphasis to the third prong of the Pearce rule, noting the difficulty of proving retaliatory motive or vindictiveness upon resentencing in any specific case. See State v. Palmer, 468 A.2d at 988 n. 8.
On its appeal, the State contends that Weeks and Palmer stand for the proposition that a trial court is not constitutionally prohibited from imposing a heavier second sentence, but that due process requires only that judicial vindictiveness against the defendant play no part in the resentencing process. See State v. Palmer, 468 A.2d at 988. In the case at bar the second sentencing judge noted on the record that he had no knowledge of the sentence imposed following the first conviction. The judge further enumerated objective facts that in his judgment required the second sentence; namely, that this OUI conviction was Viol-ette's third and that Violette had required the apprehending police officer to engage in a high-speed chase. The State contends that the circumstances of the second sentence completely rebut the Weeks presumption of vindictiveness and that under federal constitutional doctrine as it has evolved since Pearce, the application of a prophylactic rule against an increased sentence following retrial is unwarranted in this case.
As a matter of decisional process, the fact that Weeks in 1970 adopted the rule of Pearce v. North Carolina as a rule of state constitutional law does not bar us in the appropriate circumstance from reexamining Weeks in light of later federal developments in the Pearce rule. We do not, however, find the case at bar an appropriate occasion for departing from our Weeks rule. Here, working with the same set of facts as were before the first sentencing judge, the second judge simply took a different view as to what was the appropriate sentence for Violette. The rule we adopted in Weeks and reaffirmed in Palmer and Keefe prevents the sentencing disparities that are inherently likely to occur when two different judges engage in sentencing on the same sentencing facts, and avoids the unseemly appearance that the defendant's ultimate sentence is greater than his first for no better reason than a change in the identity of the sentencing judge. The rule, easy of application, effectively safeguards a successful appellant upon retrial from the possibility, however slight, of retaliatory vindictiveness following reconviction, and protects a convicted defendant's right to an appeal from any chilling effect emanating from the possibility that an enhanced second sentence might result from a retrial on the same facts.
In the particular circumstances of the present case, we decline to depart from the Weeks rule and the useful structure it provides for both litigants and courts.
The entry is:
Judgment affirmed.
ROBERTS, WATHEN, GLASSMAN and CLIFFORD, JJ., concur.