Opinion ID: 1104955
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Baldasar

Text: Baldasar represented the United States Supreme Court's attempt to apply Argersinger and Scott's actual-imprisonment standard to an Illinois recidivism statute. Petitioner Baldasar had previously been convicted of misdemeanor theft. See Baldasar, 446 U.S. at 222-23, 100 S.Ct. 1585. In the prior proceeding, he was unrepresented and did not waive his right to counsel. See id. As punishment, he paid a fine of $159 and received a one-year probation sentence. See id. Six months later, Illinois charged him with stealing a $29 showerhead, which the State sought to prosecute as a felony based on Baldasar's prior uncounseled misdemeanor conviction. See id. The Illinois courts permitted the prosecution to introduce evidence of the prior uncounseled misdemeanor conviction to enhance Baldasar's subsequent offense from a misdemeanor to a felony. See id. Baldasar objected, contending that this enhancement violated the rule of Argersinger and Scott. In other words, Illinois was increasing his punishment as a direct result of his prior uncounseled misdemeanor conviction and that uncounseled misdemeanor conviction, which was unreliable for the purpose of imposing imprisonment in the first instance, remained unreliable for the purpose of enhancing his imprisonment in a collateral proceeding. See id. at 223-24, 100 S.Ct. 1585. A four-justice plurality [12] agreed with Baldasar, while a four-justice dissent did not. See id. at 224, 100 S.Ct. 1585 (Stewart, J., concurring, joined by Brennan and Stevens, JJ.) ([P]etitioner ... was sentenced to an increased term of imprisonment only because he had been convicted in a previous prosecution in which he had not had the assistance of appointed counsel in his defense. It seems clear to me that this prison sentence violated the constitutional rule of Scott. ); id. at 227, 100 S.Ct. 1585 (Marshall, J., concurring, joined by Brennan and Stevens, JJ.) (The sentence petitioner actually received would not have been authorized by statute but for the previous conviction. It was imposed as a direct consequence of that uncounseled conviction and is therefore forbidden under Scott and Argersinger.); id. at 230-34, 100 S.Ct. 1585 (Powell, J., dissenting, joined by Burger, C.J., White and Rehnquist, JJ.) (claiming that the enhanced punishment Baldasar received was not imposed as a result of his prior misdemeanor, and thus did not violate Argersinger or Scott ). Justice Blackmun, meanwhile, developed his own approach without addressing the issue framed by the Court. [13] Instead, he adopted a hybrid construct, which he lifted verbatim from his dissent in Scott. His approach combined Argersinger and Scott's actual-imprisonment standard with a right-to-jury standard articulated by the Supreme Court in Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. 145, 88 S.Ct. 1444, 20 L.Ed.2d 491 (1968). Justice Blackmun, thus, offered the following rule in his concurrence: [A]n indigent defendant in a state criminal case must be afforded appointed counsel whenever the defendant is prosecuted for a nonpetty criminal offense, that is, one punishable by more than six months' imprisonment, see Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. 145[, 88 S.Ct. 1444, 20 L.Ed.2d 491] (1968); Baldwin v. New York, 399 U.S. 66[, 90 S.Ct. 1886, 26 L.Ed.2d 437] (1970), or whenever the defendant is convicted of an offense and is actually subjected to a term of imprisonment, Argersinger v. Hamlin, 407 U.S. 25[, 92 S.Ct. 2006, 32 L.Ed.2d 530] (1972). 446 U.S. at 229, 100 S.Ct. 1585 (Blackmun, J., concurring) (quoting Scott, 440 U.S. at 389-90, 99 S.Ct. 1158 (Blackmun, J., dissenting)). This is the same rule that we adopted in Hlad v. State, 585 So.2d 928, 929-30 (Fla.1991). The most accurate description of Baldasar appears to be the one that Justice Souter later offered in Nichols: [T]he Baldasar Court was in equipoise, leaving a decision in the same posture as an affirmance by an equally divided Court, entitled to no precedential value. Nichols, 511 U.S. at 750, 114 S.Ct. 1921 (Souter, J., concurring in the judgment). Cf. Marks v. United States, 430 U.S. 188, 193, 97 S.Ct. 990, 51 L.Ed.2d 260 (1977) ([W]hen a fragmented Court decides a case and no single rationale explaining the result enjoys the assent of five Justices, `the holding of the Court may be viewed as that position taken by those Members who concurred in the judgments on the narrowest grounds.' (as recognized by numerous courts, it is difficult to determine Baldasar's narrowest grounds)). But see Kirsten M. Nelson, Note, Nichols v. United States and the Collateral Use of Uncounseled Misdemeanors in Sentence Enhancement, 37 B.C. L.Rev. 557, 582 (1996) (All three concurring opinions in Baldasar share one common and narrow reasoning: the deprivation of liberty cannot occur without the right to counsel. (footnote omitted)).