Court Opinion

ID: 9464468
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 23:34:03.662263+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:38:38.695563
License: Public Domain

*1201THORNBERRY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
With deference, I must dissent.
Perhaps, if I were the prosecutor, I would not have sought an indictment charging the defendant with an habitual count; if I were a state lawmaker I would vote to amend the statute so that it would not be applied as has been done here; or if I were governor of the State of Texas, I would consider the petitioner a prime candidate for clemency. But I do not hold these offices and my decision must be guided by the eighth amendment rather than my feelings of compassion and justice. In that amendment, I find nothing that compels the result reached by the majority.
The majority accepts Rummel’s argument that a life sentence is so grossly disproportionate to the crimes he committed that it cannot withstand an eighth amendment attack. To reach that result the majority focuses on the small amount of money involved and the asserted triviality of all of Rummel’s offenses. But Rummel was not sentenced to life imprisonment for stealing $230.00; the life sentence resulted from his having committed three separate and distinct felonies under the laws of Texas. If the state is entitled to characterize a particular criminal act as a felony,1 and to enforce its constitutional habitual criminal statute,2 I cannot understand how these two constitutional statutes coalesce to produce an unconstitutional result. No neutral principle of adjudication3 permits a federal *1202court to hold that in a given situation individual crimes are too trivial in relation to the punishment imposed. I know of no stopping point for today’s decision.
While it is well-settled that the eighth amendment circumscribes legislative power to punish crime,4 the balance to be struck when a court enters this traditionally legislative field is not easily determined. The judicial function lies somewhere between abdication of fundamental responsibility in the guise of judicial restraint and the insertion of judicial conceptions of wisdom and propriety. Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 92 S.Ct. 2726, 2741, 33 L.Ed.2d 346 (1972) (Brennan, J. concurring). To my mind, the majority has strayed too far in the latter direction.
In doing so, the majority deprecates the state’s interest in protecting its citizens from the repetition of property crimes. Having found that Rummel was not “depraved,” “heinous,” or “incorrigible,” the majority facilely submits that he does not pose such a threat to society to merit life imprisonment. In spite of an attempt to limit this case through an “unconstitutional-as-applied approach,” the result of its conclusion will surely be an attack on the habitual offender statute in every instance of its attempted application to property crime. However, nothing in the court’s opinion informs state prosecutors, courts, or legislatures of the possible limits of error.
Moreover, today’s decision signals a departure from longstanding precedent in this circuit. In Rogers v. United States, 304 F.2d 520 (5 Cir. 1962), the defendant was convicted of possession of a letter stolen from an authorized mail depository, forgery of a treasury check and the uttering of forgery with intent to defraud the United States. The treasury check underlying the offenses was for $380.51. None of Rogers’ prior convictions involved violence. The panel affirmed his twenty-five-year sentence as within the statutory limit and found it unnecessary to pass on whether the sentence was within the eighth amendment standards.5 In Rener v. Beto, 447 F.2d 20 (5 Cir. 1971), cert. denied, 405 U.S. 1051, 92 S.Ct. 1521, 31 L.Ed.2d 787 (1972), the court upheld a thirty-year sentence for the possession of a single marijuana cigarette with the following statement:
This Circuit has long followed the principle that a sentence within the statutory limits set by a legislature is not to be considered cruel or unusual, (citations omitted). A sentence of thirty years is within the range of punishment prescribed by the Texas Penal Code for a second offense of possession of marijuana.
If the majority’s analysis is correct, Rummel’s case is indeed the “easy” one in which to apply it. Here the court faces an individual charged with what may seem to many to be insignificant offenses when the spotlight is on the amount of money involved. Surely the principle of decision cannot be the dollar sign, and the court gives no other, indication where the line is to be drawn. Whatever sociological analysis I might apply to this case, I cannot avoid the conclusion that with this decision we stand on the brink of the “slippery slope” in its most classic sense. For that reason I cannot add my voice to that of the majority and must respectfully — but firmly — DISSENT.
ON PETITION FOR REHEARING AND PETITION FOR REHEARING EN BANC
Before BROWN, Chief Judge, THORN-BERRY, COLEMAN, GOLDBERG, AINS*1203WORTH, GODBOLD, MORGAN, CLARK, RONEY, GEE, TJOFLAT, HILL, FAY, RUBIN and VANCE, Circuit Judges.
BY THE COURT:
A member of the Court in active service having requested a poll on the application for rehearing en banc and a majority of the judges in active service having voted in favor of granting a rehearing en banc,
IT IS ORDERED that the cause shall be reheard by the Court en banc with oral argument on a date hereafter to be fixed. The Clerk will specify a briefing schedule for the filing of supplemental briefs.

. The state’s right to categorize an offense as a felony and to determine appropriate punishment in the first instance is beyond dispute. That this is so is demonstrated by the variety of statutory schemes relating to the type of offenses for which Rummel received habitual criminal treatment. Not only do some statutes retain the technical common law distinctions, compare Fla.Rev.Stat.Ann. § 812.021 (grand larceny statute) with Ga.Code Ann. 26-1803, et seq. (theft statutes), but the dollar amounts necessary to comprise a felony offense vary considerably. See Alabama Code Ann., Tit. 14, § 331 (Cum.Supp.1973) (felony to take personal property worth more than $25.00); Fla.Rev. Stat.Ann. § 812.021 (felony to take property worth more than $100 or of an aggregate value of $200 in a twelve month period); Miss.Code Ann. § 97-17-41 (felony to take property worth more than $100). Thus I assume that Texas’ right to impose a monetary boundary on felony offenses could not have been challenged by the petitioner. That Texas has since raised that limit is irrelevant. Prior law in this circuit so dictates. In Capuchino v. Estelle, 506 F.2d 440 (5 Cir. 1975), the petitioner was convicted of possession of narcotics paraphernalia. Two prior non-capital felonies were used for enhancement and he received a life sentence under the very statute the present petitioner challenges. In upholding the denial of habeas corpus, the panel specifically rejected the rationale of Hart v. Coiner, 483 F.2d 136 (4 Cir. 1973), cert. denied, 415 U.S. 983, 94 S.Ct. 1577, 39 L.Ed.2d 881 (1974), despite the fact that at the time of his habeas Capuchino could not have been convicted of more than a misdemeanor for which he could have served a year in jail.

. Spencer v. Texas, 385 U.S. 554, 87 S.Ct. 648, 17 L.Ed.2d 606 (1967). The majority concedes that the Texas statute is not unconstitutional but adopts an “unconstitutional-as-applied” approach to determine that in this instance the statute is invalid. The cases cited by the majority to support its approach are, however, inapposite to the issue in this case.

. The majority embraces the disproportionality rationale of Hart v. Coiner, supra, because it “applies objective criteria” to eighth amendment determinations. With due respect to my colleagues, I find no such objectivity in today’s decision. The first of the four criteria requires a court inquiry into the “nature of the crime.” The characterization of Rummel’s crimes as minor property offenses is a subjective one based on the majority’s decision that there simply was not enough money involved to permit the state to exact a life imprisonment. For many $200.00 is not an insignificant sum of money. To state that a crime is one against property does not dispose of the difficulty involved in these cases. That difficulty is apparent in later Fourth Circuit decisions. Two years after Hart was written, its own author refused to apply it in Griffin v. Warden, West Virginia State Penitentiary, 517 F.2d 756 (4th Cir.), cert. denied, 423 U.S. 990, 96 S.Ct. 402, 46 L.Ed.2d 308 (1975). Griffin was charged with grand larceny. His two prior offenses were breaking and entering and burglary of a residence. The court stated:
These and grand larceny are serious offenses that clearly involved the potentiality of violence and danger to life as well as property. Whether or not Griffin may be actually deserving of such extreme punishment is not within our province to decide; .
See also Wood v. State of South Carolina, 483 F.2d 149 (4 Cir. 1973) (refusing to apply Hart to a five-year sentence for an obscene telephone call; defendant had prior convictions for larceny and auto theft).
*1202The second prong of the Hart test, whether the penalty was necessary to accomplish the legislative purpose, is subject to the same criticism as the first. The last element, comparison of punishment of other offenses is limited by Capuchino, supra. This leaves only the third element that Texas’ penalty is harsh in comparison with other states to support the majority opinion.

. See Ingraham v. Wright, 430 U.S. 651, 97 S.Ct. 1401, 51 L.Ed.2d 711 (1977); Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 92 S.Ct. 2726, 33 L.Ed.2d 346 (1972); Weems v. United States, 217 U.S. 349, 30 S.Ct. 544, 54 L.Ed. 793 (1910).

. See also Yeager v. Estelle, 489 F.2d 276 (5 Cir.), cert. denied, 416 U.S. 908, 94 S.Ct. 1616, 40 L.Ed.2d 113 (1973). (Citing Hart, but refusing to overturn a “patently absurd” 500-year sentence for murder with malice.)