Court Opinion

ID: 9486843
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:02:03.038505+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:51:58.049411
License: Public Domain

EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
The opinion of the court advances four principal propositions:
1. A state need not permit an indirect collateral attack on an earlier conviction in the course of sentencing for a new offense.
2. A state should afford collateral review of the earlier conviction, after it has become salient to a sentence for another crime, subject to the standard rules about forfeiture, relitigation, undue delay, and abuse of the writ.
3. If the court in the collateral proceeding sets aside the earlier conviction, any sentence enhanced because of that conviction must be set aside, and the defendant must be resentenced without reliance on that conviction.
4. If the court in the collateral proceeding concludes that the earlier conviction is valid (or that the request for collateral relief is procedurally barred), then a sentence enhanced by virtue of that conviction does not violate the Constitution or laws of the United States and is not subject to attack under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. This implies that a federal court will not make an independent inquiry into the validity of the conviction that was used to enhance the current sentence unless the state fails to offer processes to set aside invalid prior convictions.
I agree in the main with these propositions and therefore join the judgment and the bulk of the court’s opinion. (I take up below the nature of the reservations.)
The first proposition flows from United States v. Mitchell, 18 F.3d 1355 (7th Cir.1994). The Supreme Court’s impending decision in Custis v. United States, No. 92-5209 (argued Feb. 28, 1994), may affect this step of the argument, but, for now, Mitchell controls.
The second proposition reflects ordinary practice. Athough federal law does not require states to provide collateral review of criminal convictions, all do. My colleagues properly emphasize that the role a prior conviction plays in sentencing for a new criminal episode may offer fresh impetus and justification for such a challenge. States should be receptive--lest they encourage everyone to wage more vigorous campaigns against all convictions on the off chance that they might be invoked to support recidivist sentencing. But state and federal courts retain authority to enforce doctrines limiting the scope of collateral review. Some of these doctrines address the sort of problem we confront. For example, 21 U.S.C. § 851(e) sets a five-year limit on the time defendants have to challenge convictions that may be used in sentencing for drug offenses. Collateral review of the first conviction may be impossible by the time the defendant is in the dock for a new offense, but § 851(e) has been upheld against constitutional challenge. United States v. Williams, 954 F.2d 668, 673 (11th Cir.1992). Contra, United States v. Davis, 15 F.3d 902, 914-16 (9th Cir.1994). Athough the majority questions Williams (opinion at 1367 n. 9), we lack power to grant collateral relief after judgment in the teeth of a statute. The writ to which Article I § 9 el. 2 of the Constitution refers is the one known in eighteenth-century England — principally the pretrial contest to the custodian’s power to hold a person, the device that prevents arbitrary detention without trial. Ex parte Bollman & Swartwout, 8 U.S. (4 Cranch) 75, 2 L.Ed. 554 (1807); Ex parte McCardle, 73 U.S. (6 Wah.) 318, 18 L.Ed. 816 (1867); Ex parte Royall, 117 U.S. 241, 6 S.Ct. 734, 29 L.Ed. 868 (1886). Federal judges’ power to reexamine judgments rendered by courts possessing jurisdiction depends wholly on statute. Ex parte Kearney, 20 U.S. (7 Wheat.) 39, 5 L.Ed. 391 (1822); see also Dallin H. Oaks, Habeas Corpus in the States-1776-1865, 32 U.Chi.L.Rev. 243, 244-45 (1965). Collateral review of judgments accordingly is subject to legislative control, and when Congress curtails that power, we must respect its decision.
The third proposition finds strong support in United States v. Tucker, 404 U.S. 443, 92 *1372S.Ct. 589, 30 L.Ed.2d 592 (1972), and Johnson v. Mississippi, 486 U.S. 578, 108 S.Ct. 1981, 100 L.Ed.2d 575 (1988). Tucker held that the invalidation, on constitutional grounds, of a conviction that had been used to enhance a later sentence revealed that the sentence had been based on “misinformation of constitutional magnitude”, 404 U.S. at 447, 92 S.Ct. at 592, which required resentencing. Johnson held that if one state’s courts set aside a conviction on which another state relied in sentencing, the second state must modify its sentence in response. Tucker relied on 28 U.S.C. § 2255. As this is a close parallel to 28 U.S.C. § 2254, Tucker implies that state prisoners are entitled to the same sort of relief. Johnson reached the Supreme Court from a state court, which denied an application for collateral relief. It therefore does not interpret § 2254, but there can be little doubt that a sentence violating the norm established in Johnson would call for relief under § 2254.
The fourth proposition reflects the principle that if a state uses constitutionally valid procedures to render a judgment, the possibility that these procedures failed to catch a mistake in a particular case does not make the judgment constitutionally repugnant. Cases as diverse as Herrera v. Collins, - U.S. -, 113 S.Ct. 853, 122 L.Ed.2d 203 (1993), and Stone v. Powell, 428 U.S. 465, 96 S.Ct. 3037, 49 L.Ed.2d 1067 (1976), illustrate parts of this proposition. Cf. Reed v. Clark, 984 F.2d 209 (7th Cir.1993), cert. granted under the name Reed v. Farley, - U.S. -, 114 S.Ct. 437, 126 L.Ed.2d 371 (1993) (argued Mar. 28,1994). It is not clear to me why this should not lead to the rule that a trial and direct appeal — or an opportunity to enjoy these procedures — are themselves enough to permit a later court to rely on the prior judgment. Once a defendant’s “chance to appeal has been waived or exhausted, ... [a court may] presume that he stands fairly and finally convicted.” United States v. Frady, 456 U.S. 152, 164, 102 S.Ct. 1584, 1592-93, 71 L.Ed.2d 816 (1982).
We know from Lewis v. United States, 445 U.S. 55, 100 S.Ct. 915, 63 L.Ed.2d 198 (1980), that even uncounseled convictions may be used as the foundation for a recidivist crime. Congress made it a felony to possess a firearm after having been convicted of a crime; the Court held that this meant any prior conviction, even one rendered without constitutionally appropriate procedures. Defendants may use the trial and appeal to vindicate their constitutional entitlements. If they accept the judgment (as Lewis did), they may not ignore the legal consequences of that judgment. If as Lewis holds a prior judgment may be deemed conclusive for purposes of defining a criminal offense, why is it not conclusive for purposes of pronouncing sentence for a later offense? My concurring opinion in Cuppett v. Duckworth, 8 F.3d 1132, 1144-48 (7th Cir.1993) (en banc), concludes that there is no satisfactory answer to this question, which led me to say that a sentencing court is entitled to take at face value any prior conviction that was, or could have been, fully contested at trial and on direct appeal, and that has not been set aside on collateral review. Cf. United States v. Mendoza-Lopez, 481 U.S. 828, 841-42, 107 S.Ct. 2148, 2156-57, 95 L.Ed.2d 772 (1987) (alien charged with reentry after being deported may not challenge the conduct of the deportation hearing if he had an opportunity to obtain judicial review in the usual course). To the extent the majority departs from this understanding, I do not join its opinion.
Footnote 10 of the majority’s opinion also gives me pause. My colleagues assert that one state may entertain a collateral attack on another state’s conviction despite the full faith and credit clause. Although there is some force to the observation in Mitchell, 18 F.3d at 1361, that at sentencing a court “is not being asked to approve, enforce, or vacate the prior conviction, but merely to determine a proper ... sentence” for the new crime, the majority’s approach removes such inquiries from sentencing. By sending the defendant to a separate proceeding, the majority calls for a standard attack on the prior judgment. That ought to occur in the rendering state, as it did in Johnson, rather than in the state that imposed the recidivist conviction. We have remarked that the full faith and credit clause makes any other approach problematic:
Johnson v. Mississippi, 486 U.S. 578, 108 S.Ct. 1981, 100 L.Ed.2d 575 (1988), holds *1373that if the rendering state sets aside its conviction, other states may not use that judgment to enhance their own sentences. Although the Court did not rely on the Full Faith and Credit Clause, it reserved the possibility that the Clause might have required the same decision. Id. at 585 n. 6, 108 S.Ct. at 1986 n. 6. If one state is forbidden to consider a conviction held invalid by the rendering state, perhaps it is required to accept as valid a conviction still on the books in the rendering state. Compare Strader v. Troy, 571 F.2d 1268, 1268 (4th Cir.1978), with United States v. Jones, 907 F.2d 456, 460-69 (4th Cir.1990), with id. at 482-83 (Wilkinson, J., dissenting). A state might believe, as the majority did in Jones, that to disregard another state’s conviction in sentencing is not to deny it full faith and credit; yet we do not suppose that a state could say that it may deny registration and enforcement to another state’s judgment so long as it gives lip service to the “validity” of that judgment. All the same, the Supreme Court has excused penal judgments from the seemingly absolute language of Art. IV § 1. E.g., Huntington v. Attrill, 146 U.S. 657, 666-69, 13 S.Ct. 224, 227-28, 36 L.Ed. 1123 (1892). Perhaps Art. IV § 2 cl. 2, which requires states to return escaping felons, is the measure of their obligation in criminal cases. Perhaps, however, the footnote in Johnson presages new force for Art. IV § 1 in criminal cases. Cf. Puerto Rico v. Branstad, 483 U.S. 219, 107 S.Ct. 2802, 97 L.Ed.2d 187 (1987).
Lowery v. McCaughtry, 954 F.2d 422, 423-24 (7th Cir.1992) (emphasis in original).
Quite apart from the full faith and credit clause, it is hard to see how Indiana could afford collateral relief from a conviction rendered by another state (say, Texas). The defendant would not be “in custody” in Indiana on the Texas conviction, and Lowery holds that only the rendering court may afford relief in the nature of coram nobis. Footnote 10 of the majority’s opinion does not address any of these cases or considerations. No surprise. The parties did not brief the question, which is utterly irrelevant to this case: all of Smith’s convictions were rendered by Indiana, he has received the benefit of full collateral review, and we have no need to decide whether one state may review another’s convictions — or what happens if the rendering state abolishes the writ of error coram nobis. I regard these question as open, notwithstanding the obiter dicta in footnote 10.