Court Opinion

ID: 9468974
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:28:38.888151+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:41:09.043325
License: Public Domain

HEANEY, Circuit Judge,
concurring, with whom,
BRIGHT, Circuit Judge, joins.
I join in the court’s rejection of the double jeopardy and evidentiary claims raised by the petitioner. With respect to the petitioner’s constitutional attack on the habitual offender statute, however, I concur only because we must adhere to the Court’s earlier decisions in the cases noted above. The concerns I expressed in Brown v. Parratt, 560 F.2d 303, 305 (8th Cir. 1977), and in Pierce v. Parratt, 666 F.2d at 1207-08 (1981), apply with special force in the present case.
The essential rationale of habitual offender statutes is to enhance the punishment for a crime when the person committing it had repeatedly failed at rehabilitation, as demonstrated by a pattern of crime following periods of rehabilitation. This logic requires that there must be some period of rehabilitation — be it incarceration or an alternative sentence — between the offenses which are counted toward determining habitual status.
Here, prior to the petitioner’s prison incident, he had been arrested once, tried once and sentenced once to a concurrent term for having committed offenses on the same day. He might reasonably expect that a new offense would be his second incident in terms of recidivism. Instead, for an inci*693dent that took place while he was still serving the one prison term Kerns had ever received, he was suddenly deemed a three-time habitual offender. Such an application of the habitual offender statute reflects the unbridled sentencing discretion conferred upon prosecutors.
I do not wish to understate the seriousness of the petitioner’s offense within the prison and note that, standing alone, this offense carries substantial penalties. My objection is to invoking the habitual offender statute in these circumstances which, in my view, does not comport with the fundamental fairness that is the touchstone of our constitutional guarantees.