Court Opinion

ID: 9430358
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:29:34.789879+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:24.179081
License: Public Domain

Justice Brennan,
concurring in the judgment.
After respondent was sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment upon his conviction for murder, Judge Harney granted respondent’s motion for a new trial based on prosecutorial misconduct. Under these circumstances, I believe that the possibility that an increased sentence upon retrial resulted from judicial vindictiveness is sufficiently remote that the presumption established in North Carolina v. Pearce, 395 U. S. 711 (1969), should not apply here. Because respondent has not shown that the 50-year sentence imposed by *145Judge Harney after respondent’s retrial resulted from actual vindictiveness for having successfully attacked his first conviction,. I would reverse the judgment below.
I emphasize, however, that were I able to find that vindictiveness should be presumed here, I would agree with Justice Marshall that “the reasons offered by Judge Harney [were] far from adequate to rebut any presumption of vindictiveness.” Post, at 152. The Court’s dictum to the contrary, see ante, at 141-144, serves in my view only to distort the holding of Pearce.