Opinion ID: 575863
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: bradford's sentence

Text: 13 Petitioner further contends his prison sentence is so excessive that it amounts to cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment. The trial judge sentenced Bradford to the maximum penalty allowed by Louisiana law: 49.5 years imprisonment at hard labor, without possibility of parole, probation or suspension of sentence. Bradford has already argued unsuccessfully on direct appeal that his sentence was excessive under the Louisiana constitution. See Palmer, 447 So.2d at 1169. Renewing his claim that [t]his sentence is excessive under any measure, Bradford would have this court reverse his punishment as violative of the proportionality requirement set forth in Solem v. Helm, 463 U.S. 277, 290-92, 103 S.Ct. 3001, 3010-11, 77 L.Ed.2d 637 (1983). 14 This argument, which rests largely on petitioner's claim that he was hardly a career criminal, is spurious. Significantly, the Solem analysis has been replaced by the Court's recent decision in Harmelin v. Michigan, --- U.S. ----, 111 S.Ct. 2680, 115 L.Ed.2d 836 (1991), which, while preserving a constitutional proportionality requirement, also focuses almost exclusively on a comparison of the gravity of the offense and the harshness of the punishment. See McGruder v. Puckett, 954 F.2d 313 (5th Cir.1992) (forthcoming). Bradford's punishment was hardly disproportionate. At the sentencing hearing, the trial judge noted that Bradford had subjected his victim, Paul Moores to torture for an extended period of time, so that Moores would probably have suffered less had he been murdered. Calling Bradford's crime one of the most brutal offenses that the Court has heard or has seen both as an Assistant District Attorney, when I did that, and also as a Judge, the court sentenced him to the maximum penalty under Louisiana law. The sentence was harsh, but so was the crime. Beyond comparing his offense to an armed robbery for which the victim previously served twelve years in a California prison, petitioner makes no showing that his punishment was so disproportionate as to violate the Eighth Amendment.