Court Opinion

ID: 9425301
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:14:20.598226+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:54.590445
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Stewart,
with whom Mr. Justice Brennan joins, dissenting.
In North Carolina v. Pearce, 395 U. S. 711, 725, the Court held that “vindictiveness against a defendant for having successfully attacked his first conviction must play no part in the sentence he receives after a new trial.” As I see it, there is a real danger of such vin*36dictiveness even when a jury rather than a judge imposes the sentence after retrial. Because the Court today declines to require any procedures to eliminate that danger, even though procedures quite similar to those adopted in Pearce could readily be applied without sacrificing the values of jury sentencing, I must dissent.
The true threat of vindictiveness at a retrial where the jury metes out the sentence comes from the trial judge and prosecutor. Either or both might have personal and institutional reasons for desiring to punish a defendant who has successfully challenged his conviction. Out of vindictiveness the prosecutor might well ask for a sentence more severe than that meted out after the first trial, and a judge by the manner in which he charges the jury might influence the jury to impose a higher sentence at the second trial. In the present case, for example, while the petitioner was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment after his first trial, on retrial the prosecutor asked the jury to impose the death penalty, and the judge instructed the jurors that they could inflict that punishment. It is said that the prosecutor and judge gave the jury the option to impose capital punishment at the retrial simply as a tactical move to assure that the petitioner would again receive at least a 15-year sentence. But it is not inconceivable in this setting that a prosecutor or a judge might seek to secure a higher sentence for a defendant in order to punish him for his successful appeal.*
*37It was to purge that possibility of retaliation that Pearce required prophylactic measures for judicial sentencing. Without such procedures, as the Court pointed out in Pearce, it would be extremely difficult for a defendant to establish that his higher sentence was the result of a retaliatory motivation.
I agree with the Court today that some measures are ill-suited to eliminating the possibility of retaliation in a case where the jury imposes the sentence. For example, the jury ought not to be told that its sentencing power is limited by the term imposed at the first trial, for the jury might then impose a less severe sentence in reaching a compromise verdict. But there is no reason why the trial judge should not be compelled to reduce any sentence imposed by the jury after retrial to that imposed after the first trial, unless he can affirmatively set forth the kind of reasons required in Pearce for the increased sentence. “Those reasons must be based upon objective information concerning identifiable conduct on the part of the defendant occurring after the time of the original sentencing proceeding.” 395 U. S., at 726.
As in Pearce, that procedure would serve to minimize the possibility that vindictiveness had played a role in the sentence a defendant received after a new trial, and it would free a convicted man from the fear that a successful challenge to his conviction might lead to a vindictively imposed harsher sentence after a second trial. Since this measure would, at the most, reinstate the sentence imposed by the original jury, none of the basic purposes served by jury sentencing would be jeopardized.
I also agree with my Brother Marshall that allowing a more severe sentence to be imposed by a jury on retrial, when that sentence would be impermissible for a judge to impose, is an infringement upon a defendant's constitutional right to a jury trial. See United States v. Jackson, 390 U. S. 570. Requiring that a judge reduce a jury-*38imposed sentence to that imposed after the first trial, unless he can make the kind of findings required by Pearce, would eliminate that illegitimate burden upon a constitutional right.

 The Court finds the possibility of prosecutorial malice “remote.” Ante, at 27. The only basis for that conclusion appears to be that the prosecutor may have quite innocent strategic reasons for requesting an increased sentence after a retrial. But that does not foreclose the possibility that a prosecutor might have quite vindictive reasons for seeking a more severe penalty, and it underlines the extraordinary difficulty a defendant would have in attempting to prove a retaliatory motivation.