Court Opinion

ID: 9477736
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:29:58.664539+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:01.207793
License: Public Domain

REAVLEY, Circuit Judge,
with whom RUBIN, POLITZ, JOHNSON, and WILLIAMS, Circuit Judges, join dissenting:
I have never faulted the Louisiana legislative scheme under which Terrebonne was sentenced. Under that scheme a person convicted of distributing heroin may be sentenced to life imprisonment without parole, or may have the sentence suspended with supervision for one to five years, or may be confined in jail for as long as one year during the period of suspension and probation. I fully concur with the majority that this law of Louisiana has no Eighth Amendment infirmity.
My problem is with the state court’s order that sent Ricky Terrebonne to prison for the fifty years or so remaining of his lifetime. The Supreme Court in Solem v. Helm, 463 U.S. 277, 103 S.Ct. 3001, 77 L.Ed.2d 637 (1983) taught us not to consider the offense in the abstract {id. 103 S.Ct. at 3013), but to weigh the culpability of the offender. Id. at 3011. From what we know about Ricky Terrebonne, and what was known at either the 1976 or 1984 sentencing, there is simply no reasonable justification for this sentence.
Late one afternoon in September of 1975 sheriffs deputies went to Terrebonne’s house and asked him to get them heroin. Within an hour the $175 trade was made with a supplier, resulting in two or three packets for Terrebonne. The following January officers broke into his house and took him from his bed where he was sleeping with his wife and little daughter. Today he has been confined for 12V2 years and has no prospects for ever being free again.
This young man had a heroin addiction and he participated in the drug transaction. At age 17 he had pleaded guilty to burglary of a building for which he was sentenced *509to one year imprisonment, which was suspended. Earlier in 1975 he had pleaded guilty to theft under $100 (a misdemeanor, not a felony) for which he was sentenced to six months confinement, again suspended. He had not been imprisoned before. He had demonstrated no capacity for violence. His wife was troubled by his unadmitted addiction, although her testimony disproved the six packet daily demand which the majority surmises as the extent of Ter-rebonne’s habit. Add that culpability together and it remains grossly disproportionate to the sentence to Angola for a lifetime.
I need not repeat what was said in my panel dissent. 820 F.2d at 158. For the reasons stated there I continue to believe that under the authority of Solem the writ should be granted. After Solem no court may “spring a trap on a sick kitten,” to use the majority’s description of this case, without encountering the Eighth Amendment.
I do wish to join wholeheartedly in what the majority has said in footnote 13 of the opinion. It seems clear from the record that neither judge, in 1976 or 1984, understood the full options of the Louisiana law or the full consequences of the sentences given. I read this court to be saying that a new petition for habeas corpus on that ground will not be stigmatized as an abuse of the writ. Finally, it is clear that, if Terrebonne should be resentenced, his culpability will be at issue and the governing options will be those of the Louisiana law, Rev.Stat.Ann. § 40:966, La. C.Cr.P. Arts. 893, 895, in effect on September 18, 1975, the date of the offense. State v. Schaeffer, 414 So.2d 730 (La.1982).