Court Opinion

ID: 9425302
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:14:20.601915+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:54.594033
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Marshall,
dissenting.
I cannot agree with the Court that it is permissible for a jury, but not for a judge, to give a defendant on his retrial a sentence more severe than the one he received in his first trial, without specifying particular aspects of his behavior since the time of his first trial that justify the enhanced sentence. Such a rule is defective in two ways. First, the Court acknowledges that a jury violates the Constitution when it gives such a defendant a more severe sentence to punish him for successfully taking an appeal. Ante, at 26-28. Yet, when the costs, in terms of other values served by juries, of the methods of preventing, detecting, and remedying that kind of violation are balanced against the minor degree to which restrictions on jury resentencing impair the values served by jury sentencing, the need to vindicate the constitutional right warrants restrictions on juries similar to those we placed on judges in North Carolina v. Pearce, 395 U. S. 711 (1969). Second, as in United States v. Jackson, 390 U. S. 570 (1968), the possibility that a jury might increase a sentence for reasons that would be unavailable to a judge unnecessarily burdens the defendant’s right to choose a jury trial. I therefore respectfully dissent.
I begin with what appears to be common ground. If the jury on retrial has been informed of the defendant’s prior conviction and sentence, the possibility is real that it will enhance his punishment simply because he successfully appealed. The Court apparently agrees, ante, at 27 n. 13, 28-29, nn. 14-15, and suggests that a variety of preventive and remedial measures must be taken to min*39imize that possibility. Those measures, I believe, are too intrusive on the process of selecting the jury and insulating its deliberations from inquiry. In Pearce we devised a remedy for judicial vindictiveness in sentencing that was broader than the constitutional vice, because a remedy more closely tailored to the vice would too severely intrude on the process by which the judge made his sentencing decisions. A similar remedy is justified for the same reasons in the case of jury resentencing.
Of course a jury that does not know of a prior conviction and sentence cannot take them into account when it resentences the offender. But there is a real possibility that a jury will know of a prior sentence and will enhance the punishment it imposes out of vindictiveness as the Court apparently concedes in limiting its holding to “properly controlled retrial [s].” Ante, at 26. And only when the possibility of vindictiveness can confidently be said to be de minimis can Pearce be distinguished. Even in Pearce we acknowledged the difficulty in establishing that sentences were frequently enhanced out of vindictiveness. 395 U. S., at 725 n. 20. Indeed, we could cite only studies that showed that increased sentences on reconviction were “far from rare,” ibid.; we had before us no evidence at all that vindictiveness actually played a part in a substantial number of cases where sentences were increased.1
*40Given the possibility of vindictiveness, a defendant is entitled to a remedy designed to eliminate, or at least minimize, that possibility. It follows, I believe, that the defense is entitled to have prospective jurors asked carefully framed questions designed to explore their knowledge of a prior conviction and sentence. Cf. Ham v. South Carolina, 409 U. S. 524 (1973). But it will inevitably be difficult to frame questions that will do so without informing the jurors of those facts in the very act of questioning them. In addition, the right to have questions asked of prospective jurors would be meaningless unless the defense could challenge jurors for cause solely on the basis of the answers to those questions. Yet nearly all of the States in which jury sentencing is required have large rural areas,2 where it is quite likely that a retrial after a successful appeal will be a notorious public event. It seems to me probable, then, that the right recognized by the Court will substantially impede expeditious selection of juries, for it will generally be easy to make a threshold showing of local publicity, and may often so severely limit the number of available jurors as to raise serious questions of the representativeness of the jury finally chosen.3
The Court suggests that a curative instruction might minimize the possibility that the jury will be improperly influenced by its knowledge of a prior conviction or *41sentence. Ante, at 28 n. 14. We have already recognized, however, that it is quite unrealistic to believe that instructions to disregard evidence that a jury might treat in a manner highly prejudicial to a defendant will often be followed. Jackson v. Denno, 378 U. S. 368, 388-389 (1964); Bruton v. United States, 391 U. S. 123, 128-137 (1968). Cf. E. Morgan, Some Problems of Proof Under the Anglo-American System of Litigation 105 (1956). And curative instructions may serve only to highlight the problem. Not every such instruction is ineffective, of course, but I would not burden the judicial process with difficult inquiries into the effectiveness of such an instruction where, as here, the State’s interest in having sentences imposed by a jury can easily be satisfied without requiring such inquiries. See infra, at 43.
Finally, a post-sentencing inquiry of a jury that imposes a more severe sentence might disclose that vindictiveness played no part in its sentencing decision. But this could be achieved only by sacrificing the traditional secrecy of jury deliberations. Cf. Clark v. United States, 289 U. S. 1 (1933), and cases cited therein.
Because of the differing institutional positions of judge and jury,4 and because the jury that sentences also con*42victs and so focuses on the facts of the offense, the question of applying the limitations imposed hy Pearce on resentencing by judges to resentencing by juries would surely be a close one, if only the issue of possible vindictiveness were involved. Since no state interests in jury sentencing would be impaired to any significant degree by imposing such limitations, however, the question should be resolved in favor of limiting the jury’s power.
One group of policies underlying jury sentencing derives from the belief that juries will be more humane and compassionate than judges: judges, it is said, represent a centralized government remote from the details of local life; judges who often must seek re-election may be unduly swayed by political considerations that have little impact on jurors; and judges who routinely deal with criminal cases may become callous and insensitive to the human problems of defendants. In contrast, the jury has close ties to the local community, and because it sits only once and then dissolves, its members ordinarily have little experience with criminal offenders. Cf. Note, Jury Sentencing in Virginia, 53 Va. L. Rev. 968, 988-991 (1967). It is somewhat anomalous, however, to contend that because juries are more compassionate than judges, they may impose a sentence more severe than a judge may constitutionally impose. I cannot understand, therefore, how the belief that juries are more compassionate than judges justifies a rule that permits a jury on retrial to impose a sentence more severe than that imposed by the original jury.
The second policy implicated in jury sentencing is that the jury serves as a “link between contemporary community values and the penal system,” Witherspoon v. Illinois, 391 U. S. 510, 519 n. 15 (1968). More accurately than a judge, the jury reflects the community’s moral attitude toward the particular offender. The jury’s function in sentencing, then, is to make the punishment *43fit the crime, not the criminal. Limitations on the sentences a jury might impose do impair its ability to decide what punishment fits the crime before it. But in cases like this one, one jury has already determined what it, as a representative of community views, thinks is an appropriate sentence. Indeed, it has done so after a trial in which reversible error, presumably prejudicial to the defendant, occurred. Thus, this state interest is not substantially impaired by limitations designed to preclude the second jury from imposing a sentence based, in part, on a desire to punish the defendant for taking an appeal.
In short, even if only the question of vindictiveness were involved in the case of jury resentencing, I would hold that limitations similar to those in Pearce must be imposed on jury resentencing: alternative methods of minimizing vindictiveness may seriously impair other values, and the limitations of Pearce do not greatly affect the values served by jury sentencing.5 But vindictiveness alone is not the only issue here. For, by establish*44ing one rule for sentencing by judges and another for sentencing by juries, the Court places an unnecessary burden on the defendant’s right to choose to be tried by a jury after a successful appeal.
We held unconstitutional in United States v. Jackson, 390 U. S. 570 (1968), a sentencing structure that placed an unnecessary burden on a defendant’s right to a jury trial. The Court today purports to distinguish Jackson on the ground that subsequent cases show that Jackson does not make unconstitutional sentencing structures that impose a burden on the exercise of constitutional rights as “an incidental consequence.” Ante, at 32. Yet in Jackson we said, “The question is not whether the chilling effect is ‘incidental’ rather than intentional; the question is whether that effect is unnecessary and therefore excessive.” 390 U. S., at 582. Brady v. United States, 397 U. S. 742 (1970), and Crampton v. Ohio, 402 U. S. 183 (1971), the cases that the Court now relies on, did not overrule Jackson; nor did they change the constitutional test. The question is still whether the burden on the exercise of the right to be tried by a jury is necessary, not whether it is only incidental to the accomplishment of some legitimate state purpose.
In Brady, a defendant sought to vacate his guilty plea on the ground that he had pleaded guilty only to avoid capital punishment, under a statute that provided for the death penalty only on the recommendation of the jury. The Court viewed his argument as applicable to *45every kind of inducement that the prosecution offers to a defendant in order to elicit a plea of guilty. See 397 U. S., at 750-753. Thus, on the Court's analysis, upholding his challenge would have necessarily invalidated the widespread practice of plea bargaining, which the Court thought essential to our system of criminal justice. The burden on the exercise of a defendant's right not to incriminate himself was therefore necessary, in the terms of the analysis required by Jackson,
Similarly, the defendant in Crompton contended that failure to separate the trial of a capital case into a guilt-determining phase and a sentencing phase deterred him from testifying to facts bearing on sentence alone, for to testify would have opened him up to impeachment and to questions bearing on guilt. To the Court, however, such pressure was indistinguishable from that placed on him by a very powerful case for the prosecution that might require rebuttal, or by a large number of other widely accepted procedural rules. See 402 U. S., at 213-216. As in Brady, then, the Court could not agree with the defendant without holding unconstitutional many procedures that it thought essential to the criminal process.
Both Brady and Crompton applied the test of necessity. The Court today does not, as it concedes when it says that “[where] the burden ... is as speculative as this one is,” constitutional limitations on resentenc-ing are not justified. Ante, at 34 n. 21. But Jackson, Brady, and Crampton did not involve assessments of the relative severity of the burden on the right to choose to be tried by a jury; 6 they turned on the question of strict *46necessity.7 No legitimate state interest is materially advanced by permitting a second jury to enhance punishment without limitations like those placed by Pearce on judges, and such limitations would not substantially affect any such interest. Thus, the rule endorsed by the Court today is not only unnecessary, but it unquestionably burdens a defendant’s choice of jury trial after a successful appeal.8
I believe that Pearce and Jackson require that States with jury sentencing adopt procedures by which juries resentencing an offender are precluded from considering the fact that the offender successfully appealed in determining the new sentence, and so I dissent.

 I assume that the Court would treat jury sentencing as it treated judge sentencing in Pearce if it were presented with the same kind of evidence we drew on in Pearce. Cf. Witherspoon v. Illinois, 391 U. S. 510, 516-518 (1968). Because of the differing institutional positions of judges, who will be repeatedly reviewed by appellate courts, and juries, which are not continuing bodies, cf. Illinois v. Somerville, 410 U. S. 458, 477 (1973) (Marshall, J., dissenting), evidence supporting the inference that vindictiveness may not infrequently influence jury decisions would be especially valuable from cases in which the evidence on retrial was not substantially different from the evidence at the first trial.

 In addition to Georgia, these States include Arkansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Virginia.

 Even on the Court’s analysis, if a defendant must proceed to trial before a jury that knows of his prior conviction and sentence, due process would require limitations on the sentence imposed, though such limitations would not be required in "properly controlled retrial[s].” Thus, the Court does not today endorse the proposition that limitations on jury sentencing on a retrial are never required. See ante, at 28 n. 14. At most, it holds only that, in the absence of knowledge of the prior conviction and sentence, no limitations are constitutionally compelled.

 The Court distinguishes Pearce from this case in part on the ground that there “the second sentence [was] meted out by the same judicial authority whose handling of the prior trial was sufficiently unacceptable to have required a reversal of the conviction,” while here “the jury, unlike the judge who has been reversed, will have no personal stake in the prior conviction and no motivation to engage in self-vindication.” Ante, at 27. The Court cannot mean that Pearce himself was resentenced by the same judge who sentenced him in the first place, for Pearce was tried before two different judges. See State v. Pearce, 266 N. C. 234, 236, 145 S. E. 2d 918, 920 (1966) (Judge Williams at first trial); State v. Pearce, 268 N. C. 707, 708, 151 S. E. 2d 571, 572 (1966) (Judge McLaughlin at second trial). Thus, the only differences in this respect are institutional, not personal: juries are not continuing bodies and may have little interest in deterring appeals or vindicating a colleague.

 The Court suggests that the limitations of Pearce cannot easily be adapted to jury sentencing. Ante, at 28-29, n. 15. But procedures like bifurcation, special verdicts stating the reasons for the sentence imposed or stating that the prior conviction and sentence were not taken into account, instructing the jury that the maximum sentence available to it is that imposed earlier, or empowering the judge to reduce the sentence if it exceeds the prior sentence, are some obvious alternatives. The Court suggests that the first two are inconsistent with the basic purpose of jury sentencing — making the punishment fit the crime — and that the latter two "would achieve, in the name of due process, the substance of the result we have declined to approve under the Double Jeopardy Clause.” Ante, at 29 n. 15. The latter point confuses limitations imposed by the Constitution with choices a State might make to carry out the policies it seeks to vindicate through jury sentencing; if a State chooses to impose a maximum limit on resentencing instead of establishing a bifurcated procedure, for example, the result is not, even in substance, the result urged under the Double Jeopardy Clause, for it results from *44choice among alternatives and not from constitutional commands. Similarly, bifurcation may inject into jury sentencing considerations that the State thinks are irrelevant to its purposes in establishing a system in which juries are the sentencing authority, and it may decide to adopt some other method of complying with the constitutional requirements. But surely there is no clear conflict between bifurcation or special verdicts and the purposes of jury sentencing.

 Georgia permits a defendant to plead not guilty and waive his right to jury trial. See Berry v. State, 61 Ga. App. 315, 6 S. E. 2d 148 (1939). Of the States with jury sentencing, apparently only Kentucky does not permit such a waiver. See Meyer v. Commonwealth, 472 S. W. 2d 479, 482 (Ky. 1971). Where the prosecution *46must agree to such a waiver, cf. Fed. Rule Crim. Proc. 23 (a), it would of course be impermissible to refuse agreement solely because a judge would be restricted in resentencing while a jury would not, cf. Singer v. United States, 380 U. S. 24, 37 (1965).

 In discussing whether the holding today burdens the right to appeal, the Court says that for the undesired outcome to occur, "[sjeveral contingencies must coalesce.” Thus, "the likelihood of actually receiving a harsher sentence is quite remote at the time a convicted defendant begins to weigh the question whether he will appeal.” Ante, at 33. But, of the list the Court provides, only two remain contingent when the defendant must decide to waive or insist upon a jury trial — reconviction and sentence. The Court acknowledges that in some cases, even when all the contingencies must be taken into account, the possibility of a harsher sentence might well affect- the decision to appeal. Ante, at 34-35. The burden will surely be substantial when the contingencies are reduced to two.

 The Court, in its footnote discussing this argument, does assert that the burden "cannot be said to be 'needless.’ ” Ante, at 33-34, n. 21. The sentence following that assertion does not supply any reason why the burden is necessary; it simply states two ways in which the burden might be eliminated without saying why those alternatives are so impractical as to make necessary the burden that after today’s decision, may be placed on the right to jury trial.