Opinion ID: 1172193
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Supreme Court Has Never Held Bullington Is Limited to Capital Cases

Text: The lead opinion asserts the high court in subsequent cases has suggested that Bullington does not apply to noncapital cases. (Lead opn., ante, at p. 836, italics added; but see conc. opn. of Brown, J., ante, at pp. 846-847 [noting the question remains unresolved].) Any such suggestion, of course, would not bind this court, which has an independent constitutional obligation to adjudicate the constitutional rights of litigants before it. Moreover, the two cases the lead opinion cites as making this suggestion, Caspari, supra, 510 U.S. 383, and Pennsylvania v. Goldhammer (1985) 474 U.S. 28 [106 S.Ct. 353, 88 L.Ed.2d 183] (per curiam) (hereafter Goldhammer ), are readily distinguishable. In Caspari, supra, 510 U.S. 383, the high court confronted an Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals decision applying the Bullington analysis, in the context of a Missouri state prisoner's habeas corpus petition, to conclude prior felony convictions under Missouri's persistent offender statutes were subject to federal double jeopardy protections; thus, a state appellate court's reversal of the finding the petitioner was a persistent offender, due to insufficient evidence of the charged priors, barred retrial of the enhancement. ( Bohlen v. Caspari (8th Cir.1992) 979 F.2d 109.) The high court did not directly address the merits of this holding; instead, the court discussed whether the Eighth Circuit's decision applying double jeopardy protection to sentencing in a noncapital case was a new rule of law requiring prospective application only. ( Teague v. Lane, supra, 489 U.S. 288.) It was in this context the Supreme Court noted that Both Bullington and Rumsey were capital cases, and our reasoning in those cases was based largely on the unique circumstances of a capital sentencing proceeding. ( Caspari, supra, at p. 392 [114 S.Ct. at p. 954, 127 L.Ed.2d at p. 247].) The Caspari court did not hold Bullington was limited to capital cases. Rather, it made the observation noted above merely to support its conclusion that a reasonable jurist reviewing our precedents at the time respondent's conviction and sentence became final would not have considered the application of the Double Jeopardy Clause to a noncapital sentencing proceeding to be dictated by our precedents. ( Caspari, supra, 510 U.S. at p. 393 [114 S.Ct. at p. 955, 127 L.Ed.2d at p. 248].) Noting that federal and state courts had reached conflicting holdings on the issue ( id. at p. 395 [114 S.Ct. at p. 956, 127 L.Ed.2d at p. 249]), the court concluded that conflict concerned a `developmen[t] in the law over which reasonable jurists [could] disagree' ( ibid. ); accordingly, under Teague v. Lane , the Eighth Circuit erred in applying its ruling retroactively to defendant's benefit. Significantly for our purposes, the Supreme Court concluded its opinion in Caspari by stating:  we have no occasion to decide whether the Double Jeopardy Clause applies to noncapital sentencing, or whether Missouri's persistent-offender scheme is sufficiently trial-like to invoke double jeopardy protections.  ( Caspari, supra, at p. 397 [114 S.Ct. at p. 957, 127 L.Ed.2d at p. 250], italics added.) As is clear, therefore, Caspari did not hold Bullington was limited to capital cases; more to the point, neither did the high court suggest it would so hold in the future. The court held only that it had not previously found Bullington applicable to noncapital cases, and so the Eighth Circuit's decision to do so for the first time in the context of a final conviction challenged by way of a petition for federal habeas corpus was improper. Goldhammer, supra, 474 U.S. 28, presents similarly unimpressive evidence of a suggestion the high court would limit Bullington to capital cases. In that case, a per curiam opinion decided on summary disposition, the issue was whether, following a successful appeal by a defendant as to 34 of 112 counts of theft and forgery, the state was entitled to a remand for resentencing on other counts for which sentencing had been suspended. In other words, the case did not concern sentence enhancement proceedings, capital or otherwise. In a passage quoting DiFrancesco, supra, 449 U.S. at page 134 [101 S.Ct. at page 436], Goldhammer noted: the decisions of this Court `clearly establish that a sentenc[ing in a noncapital case ] does not have the qualities of constitutional finality that attend an acquittal. ( Goldhammer, supra, 474 U.S. at p. 30 [106 S.Ct. at pp. 353-354], italics added, brackets in original.) It would be a mistake to draw any significant inferences from the bracketed phrase. DiFrancesco was decided one year before Bullington and, at that time, the general rule was indeed that the high court's decisions in the sentencing area clearly establish that a sentence does not have the qualities of constitutional finality that attend an acquittal. ( DiFrancesco, supra, 449 U.S. at p. 134 [101 S.Ct. at p. 436].) The Supreme Court in Goldhammer no doubt simply added the bracketed phrase to adjust the quotation to take into account the holding of Bullington. At the time Goldhammer was decided (1985), as now, the only two cases in which the high court has found a sentencing proceeding subject to the double jeopardy clause have been capital cases. ( Bullington, supra, 451 U.S. 430; Rumsey, supra, 467 U.S. 203.) As we have explained, however, those cases did not turn on the fact the death penalty was involved. Caspari, supra, 510 U.S. 383, and Goldhammer, supra, 474 U.S. 28, thus provide weak evidence at best for discerning whether the Supreme Court would apply Bullington 's analysis to a noncapital case. Moreover, if we are attempting to predict what the high court would hold (as opposed to what it has held ), we must also consider Lockhart v. Nelson, supra, 488 U.S. 33, a case involving a hearing to determine noncapital sentence enhancements based on prior felony convictions. The Lockhart court assume[d], without deciding, the double jeopardy clause applied to such proceedings. ( Id. at p. 37, fn. 6 [109 S.Ct. at p. 289].) If the Supreme Court was of the opinion that Bullington was limited to capital proceedings, here was an opportunity to say so. If the court felt the double jeopardy clause was wholly inapplicable to sentencing proceedings not involving the death penalty, no reason appears to have decided Lockhart at all. In any event, even assuming for argument Caspari and Goldhammer contain a suggest[ion] (lead opn., ante, at pp. 836-837) that the Supreme Court would not now apply the federal double jeopardy clause to noncapital sentencing proceedings, the simple fact is the high court has never actually held Bullington and Rumsey are so limited. Until directed otherwise by a definitive ruling, we are not bound by perceived suggestions in Supreme Court case law. We must decide the case before us based on constitutional principles, not predictions of what another court  even a higher court  may do if faced with a justiciable controversy. The Supreme Court having never held Bullington and Rumsey to be limited to capital cases, I would follow what several courts from around the country have done (see, e.g., Bohlen v. Caspari, supra, 979 F.2d 109, 113, revd. on other grounds in Caspari, supra, 510 U.S. 383; Durosko v. Lewis (9th Cir.1989) 882 F.2d 357, 359; People v. Quintana (Colo. 1981) 634 P.2d 413, 419; Cooper v. State (Tex. Crim. App. 1982) 631 S.W.2d 508, 513-514 (hereafter Cooper ); State v. Hennings (1983) 100 Wn.2d 379 [670 P.2d 256, 259-262] (hereafter Hennings ) and apply Bullington 's hallmarks of the trial on guilt or innocence test to this noncapital case to determine whether the federal double jeopardy clause applies here.