Opinion ID: 177345
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Brown I and Brown II

Text: Our Court has examined the PFO statute on two prior occasions. Each was presented in the posture of a habeas petition, and in both cases we denied relief. In Brown I, we deemed it a reasonable conclusion by the state court that the judicial finding of at least two predicate felony convictions comported with the dictates of Apprendi, and noted that the second-prong inquiry called for under the PFO statute is of a very different sort from the judicial factfinding proscribed by Apprendi. 409 F.3d at 534. It is a vague, amorphous assessment of whether, in the court's `opinion,' `extended incarceration and life-time supervision' of the defendant `will best serve the public interest.' Id. (quoting N.Y. Penal Law § 70.10(2)). In sum, [w]e [could not] say the New York Court of Appeals unreasonably applied Apprendi when it concluded that this second determination is something quite different from the fact-finding addressed in Apprendi and its predecessors. Id. at 534-35. In Brown II, we revisited the issue in light of the Supreme Court's holding in Ring, and found the PFO statute to be distinguishable from the Arizona capital sentencing scheme invalidated in Ring. Brown II, 451 F.3d at 59. [11] We noted that Ring did not expound upon the rule announced in Apprendi in a way that is significant to the disposition of this case. Id. Each case involved a statute that required the sentencing judge to find some specified fact before imposing an enhanced sentence. Id. Thus, we concluded that it was not unreasonable for the state court to identify a crucial distinction between the unconstitutional factfinding required under the statutes at issue in both Ring and Apprendi, and the discretionary assessment called for by the PFO statute. Id. But neither Brown I nor Brown II speaks to the question that we face today: In light of the New York Court of Appeals' construction of the PFO statute in Rivera, and the Supreme Court holdings in Blakely and Cunningham, does the PFO statute suffer from a constitutional defect that the state courts were objectively unreasonable to overlook? We hold that it does not.