Court Opinion

ID: 9429739
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:27:46.219344+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:21.154240
License: Public Domain

*573Justice Powell,
with whom Justice Blackmun joins, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.
I join all but Parts II-B and III-B of the Court’s opinion. I write to emphasize my view that this case involves a straightforward application of the Court’s holding in North Carolina v. Pearce, 395 U. S. 711 (1969). The trial judge applied Pearce with commendable care, drawing a distinction at the sentencing stage of the first trial between undecided pending charges and prior convictions. At the sentencing stage following the second trial, the judge stated on the record that “[a]t this time, [petitioner] comes before me with two convictions. Last time, he came before me with one conviction.” App. to Pet. for Cert. A-42.
Petitioner insists that this explanation of the increased sentence is insufficient because it does not, in the words of Pearce, “concer[n] identifiable conduct on the part of the [petitioner] occurring after the time of the original sentencing proceeding.” 395 U. S., at 726 (emphasis added). He argues that the “conduct” was his prior crime; not the conviction.
At a different point in Pearce, however, the Court stated that “a new sentence, whether greater or less than the original sentence, [may be imposed] in the light of events subsequent to the first trial that may have thrown new light upon the defendant’s ‘life, health, habits, conduct, mental and moral propensities.’” Id., at 723 (emphasis added). The difference in language relied upon by petitioner is a matter of semantics — not substance. As the Court of Appeals stated, petitioner’s argument would “exal[t] words above substance,” 700 F. 2d 663, 667 (1983). When read properly, there simply is no conflict in the Pearce language.*
*574The Pearce presumption is not simply concerned with actual vindictiveness, but also was intended to protect against reasonable apprehension of vindictiveness that could deter a defendant from appealing a first conviction. 395 U. S., at 725. Both of these concerns are fully met in this case. It would be difficult to think of an event or occurrence more relevant to the determination of a proper sentence than a criminal conviction obtained in the interim between an original sentencing and a sentencing following retrial.
I view the portions of the Court opinion that I have joined as being fully consistent with the foregoing views.

Indeed in most situations — such as here — relevant conduct of the defendant is subsumed in the term “events.” Of course, there may be subsequent events — as well as subsequent conduct — that are irrelevant to any question of a sentence enhancement. Clearly this is not such a case.