Opinion ID: 776953
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Significance of Violent Prior Offenses

Text: 60 The final possible point of distinction between these cases and Andrade is that both Bray's and Brown's past criminal record includes crimes classified by California as violent crimes, while Andrade's did not. See § 667.5. For several reasons, this distinction cannot serve to justify a different result than in Andrade. 61 First, this asserted difference is somewhat ephemeral. Andrade's prior convictions could be considered objectively violent, while it does not appear that any of Bray's or most of Brown's priors were considered violent under California law at the time of conviction. 62 Andrade classified Andrade's residential burglary prior convictions as non-violent, as they are not in the list of violent offenses, § 667.5, referenced by Three Strikes. Nevertheless, residential burglary carries a strong potential for violence and is treated as a violent crime for other purposes, including under federal law. See Taylor v. United States, 495 U.S. 575, 581, 588, 110 S.Ct. 2143, 109 L.Ed.2d 607 (1990) (noting that the legislative history of the Armed Career Criminal Act of 1984 indicates that burglary was included because it is one of the most violent street crimes, and because of its inherent potential for harm to persons and that Congress apparently thought that all burglaries serious enough to be punishable by imprisonment for more than a year constituted a category of crimes that shared this potential for violence ...). 16 63 Conversely, California law did not categorize ordinary robbery as violent when Bray and Brown were convicted. Although Three Strikes references a section listing violent offenses that currently includes any robbery, § 667.5(c)(9), this section was only recently amended to include all robberies, Prop. 21 § 15 (approved March 7, 2000). When Bray and Brown were sentenced, section 667.5 included only robberies perpetrated in a dwelling house or inhabited building or trailer where either (1) it is charged and proved that the defendant personally used a deadly or dangerous weapon, § 667.5(c)(9) (West 1999), amended by Prop. 21 § 15 (approved March 7, 2000); or (2) the defendant voluntarily acted in concert with two or more other persons, § 667.5(c)(18) (West 1999), amended by Prop. 21 § 15 (approved March 7, 2000); see also § 213(a)(1)(A). Crimes of violence, as defined by section 667.5, also included any felony in which the defendant inflicts great bodily injury on any person or in which the defendant uses a firearm. § 667.5(c)(8). 64 It is unlikely that any of Bray's four robbery convictions would have been classified as violent under section 667.5. The first two convictions took place in a car and the third outside on railroad tracks. Nor did Bray himself use a firearm or inflict great bodily injury on any person. The record does not reveal facts indicating that the fourth robbery conviction would have fallen within section 667.5 at the time of Bray's appeal. 65 One of Brown's prior strikes — the assault with a deadly weapon, which involved a firearm — would have been classified as violent under this statute. The record does not reveal any facts of Brown's robbery conviction, other than that it was originally a conviction for burglary, so we cannot assume that it would have met the requirements of a violent felony robbery. 66 Second, the presence of violent prior offenses might well be of great significance were the crime of conviction a violent crime, but cannot be where the crime of conviction is non-violent. Where the crime of conviction is a violent one, a more severe recidivist sentencing scheme for defendants with past convictions for violent crimes would simply reflect a judgment that such individuals cannot curb their violence and should therefore be imprisoned for at least a lengthy time and for as long as life. But where, as here, the present conviction does not demonstrate continued proclivity toward involvement in violent crime, distinguishing between criminals convicted for non-violent offenses on the basis of their past violence would run up against compelling Double Jeopardy Clause considerations. 67 Recidivist sentencing schemes, imposing higher sentences on repeat offenders, have long been held constitutional in the face of Double Jeopardy challenges. As an early case put it, summarizing and quoting from still-earlier decisions, legislators may constitutionally conclude that `one who proves, by a second or third conviction, that the former punishment has been inefficacious in doing the work of reform for which it was designed' `has evidenced a depravity, which merits a greater punishment, and needs to be restrained by severer penalties than if it were his first offence.' Moore v. Missouri, 159 U.S. 673, 677, 16 S.Ct. 179, 40 L.Ed. 301 (1895), quoting Plumbly v. Commonwealth, 43 Mass. (2 Met.) 413, 1841 WL 3384 (1841), and People v. Stanley, 47 Cal. 113, 1873 WL 1267 (1873); see also, e.g., Nichols v. United States, 511 U.S. 738, 747, 114 S.Ct. 1921, 128 L.Ed.2d 745 (1994); Spencer v. Texas, 385 U.S. 554, 559-60, 87 S.Ct. 648, 17 L.Ed.2d 606 (1967); Gryger v. Burke, 334 U.S. 728, 732, 68 S.Ct. 1256, 92 L.Ed. 1683 (1947) (The sentence as a fourth offender or habitual criminal is not to be viewed as either a new jeopardy or additional penalty for the earlier crimes. It is a stiffened penalty for the crime, which is considered to be an aggravated offense because a repetitive one.) 68 At the same time, [t]he Constitution was designed as much to prevent the criminal from being twice punished for the same offense as from being twice tried for it. Ex parte Lange, 85 U.S. (18 Wall.) 163, 173, 21 L.Ed. 872 (1874); see also Witte, 515 U.S. at 395-96, 115 S.Ct. 2199. It is for this reason that the Supreme Court has repeatedly stressed, in upholding recidivist sentencing schemes, that the priors can be relevant only as they aggravate the defendant's culpability for the crime of conviction. If that connection between the prior convictions and the present one is lost, then the Double Jeopardy concerns reemerge. See Riggs, 525 U.S. at 1114, 119 S.Ct. 890 (Stevens, J., memorandum opinion respecting the denial of the petition for writ of certiorari). 69 In this connection, one can perceive two possible theories upon which a recidivist statute can maintain the relationship between the current crime and past convictions so as to avoid Double Jeopardy concerns about imposing a new punishment for past offenses: A harsher sentence for a new crime can be warranted either (1) because the defendant's repeated violations of the criminal law reveal his incapability of conforming to society's norms in general, see Rummel, 445 U.S. at 276, 100 S.Ct. 1133 (The interest in recidivist statutes is in dealing in a harsher manner with those who by repeated criminal acts have shown that they are simply incapable of conforming to the norms of society as established by its criminal law); or (2) because the defendant's current offense involves repetition of a particular offense characteristic, indicating that the defendant remains prone to that specific kind of antisocial activity — as for example, when a defendant commits a second theft offense, demonstrating proclivity toward stealing. If neither of these theories serves to justify the sentencing enhancement for the principal offense, then it is hard to escape the conclusion that the enhancement is simply an additional punishment for the previous offenses, in violation of the Double Jeopardy Clause. 70 Andrade 's holding forecloses application of the first theory — that a general lawbreaking tendency can justify Three Strikes' mandatory indeterminate life sentence for petty theft. See 270 F.3d at 747. After Andrade, for all the reasons already surveyed, an indeterminate life sentence for a defendant convicted of felony petty theft with a prior who has at least two prior serious felony convictions, see § 1192.7, violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. 17 71 If we attempt to distinguish Andrade solely on the basis that Bray and Brown have prior felonies that may have been violent, as opposed to serious, then we would be punishing Bray and Brown as non-violent lawbreakers who were violent in the past. This practice could not be justified under the second, particular criminal proclivity approach. Rather, the sentence would necessarily be an additional penalty for their earlier [violent] crimes, for which Bray and Brown have already been punished. See Gryger, 334 U.S. at 732, 68 S.Ct. 1256; Solem, 463 U.S. at 297 n. 21, 103 S.Ct. 3001; Riggs, 525 U.S. at 1114, 119 S.Ct. 890 (Stevens, J, memorandum opinion respecting the denial of the petition for writ of certiorari). Because such additional penalties for past crimes violate the Double Jeopardy Clause, the prior violence in Bray's and Brown's criminal record cannot be a basis for distinction between these cases and Andrade's. 72 We note, further, that Three Strikes itself does not distinguish between serious and violent prior offenses. Rather, Three Strikes references other sections of the California Penal Code, which exist for other purposes, to define what felonies count as prior strikes. § 667.5(d)(1) (referring to §§ 667.5(c) and 1192.7(c)). Although certain of these offenses can be found in Section 667.5(c) and are labeled as violent, while other strikes appear only in Section 1192.7(c) and are labeled as serious, the category into which prior convictions fit has absolutely no bearing on the application or length of a Three Strikes sentence. In addition, under the petty theft with a prior statute, violent prior felonies are irrelevant to the enhancement of the petty theft into a felony unless they are also theft crimes. These aspects of the California scheme indicate that California is not enhancing sentences because the prior convictions were for violent crimes. Again, ( see n. 18, supra ), it makes little sense to defer to a penal judgment that the legislature did not make in determining whether or not a particular sentence is unconstitutionally disproportionate to the crime of conviction. 73 In sum, these cases are materially indistinguishable from Andrade. We therefore conclude that Bray's and Brown's sentences did violate the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. 74