Opinion ID: 346989
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Due Process: Resentencing

Text: 27 In North Carolina v. Pearce, 395 U.S. 711, 89 S.Ct. 2072, 23 L.Ed.2d 656 (1969), the Supreme Court held that the due process clause 28 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. And since the fear of such vindictiveness may unconstitutionally deter a defendant's exercise of the right to appeal or collaterally attack his first conviction, due process also requires that a defendant be freed of apprehension of such a retaliatory motivation on the part of the sentencing judge. 29 395 U.S. at 725, 89 S.Ct. at 2080. 30 To ensure the absence of vindictiveness and to assure defendants that they will not be penalized for asserting their rights on appeal, the Court held that whenever a judge imposes a more severe sentence upon a defendant after a new trial, the reasons for his doing so must affirmatively appear and must be based upon objective information concerning identifiable conduct on the part of the defendant occurring after the time of the original sentencing proceeding, 395 U.S. at 726, 89 S.Ct. at 2081. 31 Decisions after Pearce have not been entirely consistent in applying the Pearce principle. In the first post-Pearce case, Moon v. Maryland, 398 U.S. 319, 90 S.Ct. 1730, 26 L.Ed.2d 262 (1970) (per curiam), the court dismissed the writ of certiorari as improvidently granted when counsel for the defendant conceded at oral argument that the judge who resentenced Moon had not acted vindictively. 398 U.S. at 320-21, 90 S.Ct. 1730; see Chaffin v. Stynchcombe, 412 U.S. 17, 25-26, 93 S.Ct. 1977, 36 L.Ed.2d 714 (1973). Other decisions, however, invoke the Pearce rule whenever there is a realistic likelihood that a defendant will fear revengeful resentencing, regardless of whether in fact vindictiveness played a part in the resentencing decision. E. g., Blackledge v. Perry, 417 U.S. 21, 28, 94 S.Ct. 2098, 40 L.Ed.2d 628 (1974); United States v. Ruesga-Martinez, 534 F.2d 1367, 1369 (9th Cir. 1976); United States v. Jamison, 164 U.S.App.D.C. 300, 505 F.2d 407, 415 (1974). Thus, in Colten v. Kentucky, 407 U.S. 104, 92 S.Ct. 1953, 32 L.Ed.2d 584 (1972), the Court held that neither the hazard of being penalized for seeking a new trial nor a defendant's justifiable fear of judicial vindictiveness that would deter appeals, was inherent in a two-tier court system where persons convicted of misdemeanors in so-called inferior courts could obtain trial de novo (and risk a greater sentence) in a court of general criminal jurisdiction. 407 U.S. at 112-120, 92 S.Ct. 1953. These results can be harmonized if Pearce's prophylactic rule is applied in all cases where either actual vindictiveness or a realistic fear of vindictiveness is demonstrated, see United States v. Floyd, 519 F.2d 1031, 1033 (5th Cir. 1975), as is the current practice of this Court. A substantial tension still exists, however, between Pearce and Colten. Apparently the only distinction between the two cases is that in Pearce the additional sentence was imposed by a different judge of the same court, 1 while in Colten the stiffer penalty was imposed by a different judge of the de novo court. 2 Indeed, the Pearce opinion itself seems to be predicated on the notion that the same judge imposed the harsher resentence, 3 an assumption which this Court also made. 4 32 In the instant case these doctrinal difficulties pose no significant problem. The sentencing authority at both trials was a jury. Both juries imposed identical penalties on the two original counts. With respect to those courts, appellant has failed to demonstrate the sine qua non of a vindictive resentence claim a second sentence that is in fact harsher than the first. Furthermore, the Supreme Court, in a case involving Georgia's system of jury sentencing, has held that a jury's lack of knowledge of the prior sentence, its lack of a personal stake in the overturned judgment, and its lack of an institutional interest in discouraging appeals, generally leaves no basis for holding that jury resentencing poses any real threat of vindictiveness, Chaffin v. Stynchcombe, 412 U.S. 17, 28, 93 S.Ct. 1977, 1983, 36 L.Ed.2d 714 (1973). 33 With respect to the two added counts, a similar conceptual stumbling block obstructs appellant's logic: since no sentence on these two counts was imposed at the first trial, it cannot be said that the sentence imposed by the second jury was a retaliatory penalty.