Court Opinion

ID: 9469384
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:39:09.673068+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:41:21.836981
License: Public Domain

WISDOM, Circuit Judge,
specially concurring:
I concur in the result reached by the Court, because, assuming that we can take judicial notice of the facts stated in footnote 2 of the majority opinion, the petitioner is now serving a life sentence without possibility of parole.
I read Sibron v. New York, 1968, 392 U.S. 40, 88 S.Ct. 1889, 20 L.Ed.2d 917, as holding that a defendant’s prior convictions are irrelevant to the question of collateral consequences. In Sibron the Court said:
Moreover we see no relevance in the fact that Sibron is a multiple offender.. .. It is impossible for this Court to say at what point the number of convictions on a man’s record renders his reputation irredeemable. And even if we believed that an individual had reached that point, it would be impossible for us to say that he had no interest in beginning the process of redemption with the particular case sought to be adjudicated.
Sibron at 55-57, 88 S.Ct. at 1898-1899.
Sibron involved completion of a sentence pending direct appeal of a conviction. In Harrison v. Indiana, 1979, 597 F.2d 115, however, the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit applied Sibron to habeas corpus proceedings. The court observed that “multiple offenses may affect [the] petitioner’s credibility, his eligibility for parole, and may subject him to harsher sentencing if in the future he is in trouble with the law”. 597 F.2d 118.
A blemish on an already blemished reputation is still a blemish, usually with collateral consequences.