Court Opinion

ID: 9587032
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:17:30.887242+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:59.835883
License: Public Domain

PARKS, Vice Presiding Judge,
concurring in result:
While I agree that appellant’s life sentence for attempted kidnapping after former conviction of two or more felonies is not disproportionate under the current eighth amendment analysis set forth in Solem v. Helm, 463 U.S. 277, 290, 103 S.Ct. 3001, 3010, 77 L.Ed.2d 637 (1983), I cannot agree with the majority that ‘‘Solem requires an extensive proportionality analysis only in those cases involving life sentences without the possibility of parole.” Majority, at 820. Such a position is clearly at odds with the following language in Solem:
There is no basis for the State’s assertion that the general principle of proportionality does not apply to felony prison sentences .. .It would be anomalous indeed if the lesser punishment of a fine and the greater punishment of death were both subject to proportionality analysis, but the intermediate punishment of imprisonment were not .. .The common-law principle incorporated into the Eighth Amendment clearly applied to prison terms ... [Ojur prior cases have recognized explicitly that prison sentences are subject to proportionality analysis....
[[Image here]]
[W]e hold as a matter of principle that a criminal sentence must be proportionate to the crime for which the defendant has been convicted ... [N]o penalty is per se constitutional. As the Court noted in Robinson v. California, 370 U.S., [660] at 667, 82 S.Ct., [1417] at 1420, [8 L.Ed.2d 758 (1962) ] a single day in prison may be unconstitutional in some circumstances.
Solem, 463 U.S. at 288-290, 103 S.Ct. 3009-3010 (footnotes omitted) (citations omitted) (emphasis in original). Finally, I would point out that we recently recognized the continued validity of Rummel v. Estelle, 445 U.S. 263, 100 S.Ct. 1133, 63 L.Ed.2d 382 (1980), in Johnson v. State, 764 P.2d 197, 201 (Okla.Crim.App.1988), where we held that a punishment of forty (40) years imprisonment for conviction of possession of a controlled dangerous substance, after former conviction of eight felonies, was not disproportionate under the Eighth Amendment.