MONGE v. CALIFORNIA
No. 97-6146
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued April 28, 1998—Decided June 26, 1998
524 U.S. 721
Cliff Gardner, by appointment of the Court, 522 U. S. 1106, argued the cause and filed briefs for petitioner.
David F. Glassman, Deputy Attorney General of California, argued the cause for respondent. With him on the brief were Daniel E. Lungren, Attorney General, George Williamson, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Carol Wendelin Pollack, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Susan D. Martynec, Supervising Deputy Attorney General, and Carl N. Henry, Deputy Attorney General.
Matthew D. Roberts argued the cause for the United States as amicus curiae urging affirmance. With him on the brief were Solicitor General Waxman, Acting Assistant Attorney General Keeney, and Deputy Solicitor General Dreeben.*
*David M. Porter and Robert Weisberg filed a brief for thе National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers urging reversal.
Briefs of amici curiae urging affirmance were filed for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts et al. by Scott Harshbarger, Attorney General of Massachusetts, Ellyn H. Lazar, Assistant Attorney General, and Dan Schweitzer, and by the Attorneys General for their respective States as follows: Bruce M. Botelho of Alaska, Winston Bryant of Arkansas, Gale A. Norton of Colorado, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, M. Jane Brady of Delaware, Robert A. Butterworth of Florida, Thurbert E. Baker of Georgia, Alan G. Lance of Idaho, Jim Ryan of Illinois, Jeffrey A. Modisett of Indiana, Tom Miller of Iowa, Carla J. Stovall of Kansas, Richard P. Ieyoub of Louisiana, J. Joseph Curran, Jr., of Maryland, Hubert H. Humphrey III of Minnesota, Mike Mоore of Mississippi, Jeremiah W. (Jay) Nixon of Missouri, Joseph P. Mazurek of Montana, Don Stenberg of Nebraska, Frankie Sue Del Papa of Nevada, Peter Verniero of New Jersey, Dennis C. Vacco of New York, Michael F. Easley of North Carolina, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Betty D. Montgomery of Ohio,
J. Bradley O‘Connell and Jeffrey E. Thoma filed a brief for the Cаlifornia Public Defenders Association as amicus curiae.
JUSTICE O‘CONNOR delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case presents the question whether the Double Jeopardy Clause, which we have found applicable in the capital sentencing context, see Bullington v. Missouri, 451 U. S. 430 (1981), extends to noncapital sentencing proceedings. We hold that it does not, and accordingly affirm the judgment of the California Supreme Court.
I
Petitioner was charged under California law with one count of using a minor to sell marijuana,
Under Cаlifornia‘s “three-strikes” law, a defendant convicted of a felony who has two qualifying prior convictions for “serious felonies” receives a minimum sentence of 25 years to life; when the instant conviction was preceded by one serious felony offense, the court doubles a defendant‘s term of imprisonment.
Here, petitioner waived his right to a jury trial on the sentencing issues, and the court granted his motion to bifurcate the proceedings. After a jury entered a guilty verdict on the substantive offenses, the truth of the prior conviction allegations was argued before the court. The prosecutor asserted that petitioner had personally used a stick in committing the assault, see Tr. 189-190 (June 12, 1995), App. 12, but introduced into evidence only a prison record demonstrating that petitioner had been convicted of assault with a deadly weapon and had served a prison term for the offense, sеe People‘s Exh. 1 (filed June 12, 1995), App. 3-6. The trial court found both sentencing allegations true and imposed an 11-year term of imprisonment: 5 years on count one, doubled to 10 under the three-strikes law, and a 1-year enhancement for the prior prison term. The court also stayed a 3-year sentence on count 2 and ordered the 2-year sentence on count 3 to be served concurrently.
Petitioner appealed, and the California Court of Appeal, on its own motion, requested briefing as to whether sufficient evidence supported the finding that petitioner had a qualifying prior conviction. The State conceded that the record of the sentencing proceedings did not contain proof beyond a rеasonable doubt that petitioner had personally inflicted great bodily injury or used a deadly weapon, but requested another opportunity to prove the allegations on remand. See Respondent‘s Supplemental Brief (Cal. App.), pp. 2-3, App. 33-35. The court, however, determined both that the
The California Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeal‘s ruling that the Double Jeopardy Clause bars retrial of prior conviction allegations. The three-justice plurality noted this Court‘s traditional reluctance to apply double jeоpardy principles to sentencing proceedings and concluded that the exception recognized in Bullington, supra, did not apply. In Bullington, we held that a capital defendant who had received a life sentence during a penalty phase that bore “the hallmarks of [a] trial on guilt or innocence” could not be resentenced to death upon retrial following appeal. Here, the plurality acknowledged that California‘s proceedings to assess the truth of prior conviction allegations have the hallmarks of a trial, but it found Bullington distinguishable on several grounds. First, the plurality cited statements by this Court indicating that Bullington‘s rationale is confined to the unique circumstances of capital cases. See 16 Cal. 4th, at 836-837, 941 P. 2d, at 1128 (citing Caspari v. Bohlen, 510 U. S. 383, 392 (1994); Pennsylvania v. Goldhammer, 474 U. S. 28, 30 (1985) (per curiam)). The plurality also reasoned that capital sentencing procedures are mandated by the Supreme Court‘s interpretation of the Federal Constitution, whereas the procedural protections accorded in California‘s sentence enhancement proceedings rest on statutory grounds. 16 Cal. 4th, at 837, 941 P. 2d, at 1128. The plurality then cited the breadth and subjectivity of the factual determinations at issue in the capital sentencing context, as well as the financial and emotional burden that the penalty phase of a capital case places on a defendant. Id., at 838-839, 941 P. 2d, at 1129. Finally, the plurality explained that a qualifying strike involves a finding of a particular “status” that may be made from the record of the prior conviction, while the jury‘s sentencing determinatiоn in a capital case “depends on the specific facts of the defendant‘s present
The concurring justice who provided the fourth vote to reverse noted that retrial on a prior conviction allegation would not require the factfinder to reevaluate the evidence underlying the substantive offense. Accordingly, she concluded that a second attempt at proving the allegation would not unfairly subject a defendant to the risk of repeated prosecution within the meaning of the Double Jeopardy Clause. Id., at 846-847, 941 P. 2d, at 1134-1135 (Brown, J., concurring). Three justices dissented, asserting that under Bullington‘s rationale, the Double Jeopardy Clause precludes successive efforts to prove prior conviction allegations. Id., at 847, 941 P. 2d, at 1135 (opinion of Werdegar, J.).
The California Supreme Court‘s decision deepened a conflict among the state courts as to Bullington‘s application to noncapital sentencing. Compare, e. g., State v. Hennings, 100 Wash. 2d 379, 670 P. 2d 256 (1983), with People v. Levin, 157 Ill. 2d 138, 623 N. E. 2d 317 (1993). Prior to this Court‘s determination that the nonretroactivity rule of Teague v. Lane, 489 U. S. 288 (1989), would bar the extension of Bullington to noncapital sentencing proceedings on federal habeas review, see Caspari, supra, the Federal Courts of Appeals had reached disparate conclusions as well. Compare, e. g., Briggs v. Procunier, 764 F. 2d 368, 371 (CA5 1985), with Denton v. Duckworth, 873 F. 2d 144 (CA7), cert. denied, 493 U. S. 941 (1989). In view of the conflicting authority on the issue, we granted certiorari, 522 U. S. 1072 (1998).
II
The Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment, applicable to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment, provides: “[N]or shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jеopardy of life or limb.” We have previously held that it protects against successive prosecu-
JUSTICE SCALIA insists that the recidivism enhancement the Court confronts here in fact constitutes an element of petitionеr‘s offense. His dissent addresses an issue that was neither considered by the state courts nor discussed in petitioner‘s brief before this Court. In any event, JUSTICE SCALIA acknowledges, post, at 741, that his argument is squarely foreclosed by our decision in Almendarez-Torres v. United States, 523 U. S. 224 (1998). One could imagine circumstances in which fundamental fairness would require that a particular fact be treated as an element of the offense, see post, at 738 (SCALIA, J., dissenting), but there are also
Sentencing decisions favorable to the defendant, moreover, cannot generally be analogized to an acquittal. We have held that where an appeals court overturns a conviction on the ground that the prosecution proffered insufficient evidence of guilt, that finding is comparable to an acquittal, and the Double Jeopardy Clause precludes a second trial. See Burks v. United States, 437 U. S. 1, 16 (1978). Where a similar failure of proof occurs in a sentencing proceeding, however, the analogy is inapt. The pronouncement of sentence simply does not “have the qualities of constitutional finality that attend an acquittal.” United States v. DiFrancesco, 449 U. S. 117, 134 (1980); see also Bullington, supra, at 438 (“The imposition of a partiсular sentence usually is not regarded as an ‘acquittal’ of any more severe sentence that could have been imposed“).
Our opinion in Bullington established a “narrow exception” to the general rule that double jeopardy principles have no application in the sentencing context. See Schiro v. Farley, 510 U. S. 222, 231 (1994). In Bullington, a capital defendant had received a sentence of life imprisonment from the original sentencing jury. The defendant subsequently obtained a new trial on the ground that the court had permitted prospective women jurors to claim automatic exemption from jury service in violation of the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments. 451 U. S., at 436. When the State announced its intention to seek the death penalty again, the defendant alleged a double jeopardy violation. We determined that the first jury‘s deliberations bore the “hallmarks of the trial on guilt or innocence,” id., at 439, because the jury was presented with a choice between two alternatives together with standards to guide their decision, the prosecution undertook the burden of establishing facts beyond a reasonable doubt, and the evidence was introduced in a separate proceeding that formally resembled a trial, id., at 438. In light of the jury‘s binary determination and the heightened procedural protections, we found the proceeding distinct from traditional sentencing, in which “it is impossible to conclude that a sentence less than the statutory maximum ‘con-
Moreover, we reasoned that the “embarrassmеnt, expense and ordeal” as well as the “anxiety and insecurity” that a capital defendant faces “are at least equivalent to that faced by any defendant at the guilt phase of a criminal trial.” 451 U. S., at 445. And we cited the “unacceptably high risk” that repeated attempts to persuade a jury to impose the death penalty would lead to an erroneous capital sentence. Id., at 445-446. We later extended the rule set forth in Bullington to a capital sentencing scheme in which the judge, as opposed to a jury, had initially determined that a life sentence was appropriate. See Arizona v. Rumsey, 467 U. S. 203, 209-210 (1984).
Petitioner contends that the rationale for imposing a double jeopardy bar in Bullington and Rumsey applies with equal force to California‘s proceedings to determine the truth of a prior conviction allegation. Like the Missouri capital sentencing scheme at issue in Bullington, petitioner argues, the sentencing proceedings here have the “hallmarks of a trial on guilt or innocence” because the sentencer makes an objective finding as to whether the prosecution has proved a historical fact beyond a reasonable doubt. The determination whether a defendant in fact has qualifying prior convictions may be distinguished, petitioner maintains, from the normative decisions typical of traditional sentencing. In petitioner‘s view, once a defendant has obtained a favorable finding on such an issue, the State should not be permitted to retry the allegation.
Even аssuming, however, that the proceeding on the prior conviction allegation has the “hallmarks” of a trial that we identified in Bullington, a critical component of our reasoning in that case was the capital sentencing context. The penalty phase of a capital trial is undertaken to assess the gravity of a particular offense and to determine whether it
That need for reliability accords with one of the central concerns animating the constitutional prohibition against double jeopardy. As the Court explained in Green v. United States, 355 U. S. 184 (1957), thе Double Jeopardy Clause prevents States from “mak[ing] repeated attempts to convict an individual for an alleged offense, thereby subjecting him to embarrassment, expense and ordeal and compelling him to live in a continuing state of anxiety and insecurity, as well as enhancing the possibility that even though innocent he may be found guilty.” Id., at 187-188. Indeed, we cited the heightened interest in accuracy in the Bullington decision itself. We noted that in a capital sentencing proceeding, as in a criminal trial, “‘the interests of the defendant [are] of such magnitude that... they have been protected by standards of proof designed to exclude as nearly as possible the likelihood of an erroneous judgment.‘” 451 U. S., at 441 (quoting Addington v. Texas, 441 U. S. 418, 423-424 (1979)).
Moreover, we have suggested in earlier cases that Bullington‘s rationale is confined to the “unique circumstances of
In an attempt to minimize the relevance of the death penalty context, petitioner argues that the application of double jeopardy principles turns on the nature rather than the consеquences of the proceeding. For example, petitioner notes that Bullington did not overrule the Court‘s decision in Stroud v. United States, 251 U. S. 15 (1919)—which found the double jeopardy bar inapplicable to a particular capital sentencing proceeding—but rather distinguished it on the ground that the proceeding at issue did not bear the hallmarks of a trial on guilt or innocence. Stroud predates our decisions in Furman v. Georgia, 408 U. S. 238 (1972) (per curiam), and Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U. S. 153 (1976) (joint opinion of Stewart, Powell, and STEVENS, JJ.); it was decided at a time when “no significant constitutional difference between the death penalty and lesser punishments for crime had been expressly recognized by this Court.” See Gardner, supra, at 357 (opinion of STEVENS, J.). Consequently, the capital sentencing procedures at issue in Stroud did not resemble a trial, and the Court confronted a different question in that case. The holding of Bullington turns on both the trial-like proceedings at issue and the severity of the penalty at stake. That the Court focused on the absence of procedural safeguards in distinguishing an earlier capital
In our death penalty jurisprudence, moreover, the nature and the consequences of capital sentencing proceedings are intertwined. We have held that “in capital cases the fundamental respect for humanity underlying the Eighth Amendment requires consideration of the character and record of the individual offender and the circumstances of the particular offense as a constitutionally indispensable part of the process of inflicting the penalty of death.” Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U. S. 280, 304 (1976) (plurality opinion) (citation omitted). Where noncapital sеntencing proceedings contain trial-like protections, that is a matter of legislative grace, not constitutional command. Many States have chosen to implement procedural safeguards to protect defendants who may face dramatic increases in their sentences as a result of recidivism enhancements. We do not believe that because the States have done so, we are compelled to extend the double jeopardy bar. Indeed, were we to apply double jeopardy here, we might create disincentives that would diminish these important procedural protections.
We conclude that Bullington‘s rationale is confined to the unique circumstances of capital sentencing and that the Double Jeopardy Clause does not preclude retrial on a prior conviction allegation in the noncapital sentencing context. Accordingly, the judgment of the California Supreme Court is affirmed.
It is so ordered.
JUSTICE STEVENS, dissenting.
“The Double Jeopardy Clause forbids a second trial for the purpose of affording the prosecution another opportunity to supply evidence which it failed to muster in the first proceed-
Until today, the Court has never held that a retrial or resentencing is permissible when the evidence in the first proceeding was insufficient; instead, the Court has consistently drawn a line between insufficiency of the evidence and legal errors that infect the first proceeding.4 In his unanimous
opinion for the Court in Burks v. United States, Chief Justice Burger emphasized this critical difference, i. e., “between reversals due to trial error and those resulting from evidentiary insufficiency.” Id., at 15. He specifically noted “that the failure to make this distinction has contributed substantially to the present state of conceptual confusion existing in this area of the law,” ibid., and concluded that in order to hold, as we did, “that the Double Jeopardy Clause precludes a second trial once the reviewing court has found the evidence legally insufficient,” it was necessary to overrule several prior cases, id., at 18. The Court‘s opinion today reflects the same failure to recognize the critical importance of this distinction.
I agree that California‘s decision to “implement procedural safeguards to protect defendants who may face dramatic increases in their sentences as a result of recidivism enhancements,” ante, at 734, should not create a constitutional obligation that would not otherwise exist. But the fact that so many States have done so—not just recently, but for many years5—is powerful еvidence that they were simply responding to the traditional understanding of fundamental fairness that produced decisions such as In re Winship, 397 U. S. 358 (1970),6 and Mullaney v. Wilbur, 421 U. S. 684
(1975).7 It is this same traditional understanding of fundamental fairness—dating back centuries to the common-law plea of autrefois acquit and buttressed by a special interest in finality—that undergirds the Double Jeopardy Clause.8 I respectfully dissent.
JUSTICE SCALIA, with whom JUSTICE SOUTER and JUSTICE GINSBURG join, dissenting.
I agree with the Court‘s determination that Bullington v. Missouri, 451 U. S. 430 (1981), should not be extended, and its conclusion that the Double Jeopardy Clause does not apply to noncapital sentencing proceedings. I do not, however, agree with the Court‘s assumption that only a sentencing proceeding was at issue here.
Like many other guarantees in the Bill of Rights, the Double Jeopardy Clause makes sense only against the backdrop of traditional princiрles of Anglo-American criminal law. In that tradition, defendants are charged with “offence[s].” A criminal “offence” is composed of “elements,” which are factual components that must be proved by the state beyond a reasonable doubt and submitted (if the defendant so desires) to a jury. Conviction of an “offence” renders the defendant eligible for a range of potential punishments, from which a sentencing authority (judge or jury) then selects the most
I do not believe that that distinction is (as the Court seems to assume) simply a matter of the label affixed to each fact by the legislature. Suppose that a State repealed all of the violent crimes in its criminal code and replaced them with only one offense, “knowingly causing injury to another,” bearing a penalty of 30 days in prison, but subject to a series of “sentencing enhancements” authorizing additional punishment up to life imprisonment or death on the basis of various levels of mens rea, severity of injury, and other surrounding circumstances. Could the State then grant the defendant a jury trial, with requirement of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, solely on the question whether he “knowingly cause[d] injury to another,” but leave it for the judge to determine by a preponderance of the evidence whether the defendant acted intentionally or accidentally, whether he used a deadly weapon, and whether the victim ultimately died from the injury the defendant inflicted? If the protections extended to criminal defendants by the Bill of Rights can be so easily circumvented, most of them would be, to borrow a phrase from Justice Field, “vain and idle enactment[s], which accomplished nothing, and most unnecessarily excited Con-
Although California‘s system is not nearly that sinister, it takes the first steps down that road. The California Code is full of “sentencing enhancements” that look exactly like separate crimes, and that expose the defendant to additional maximum punishment.
Earlier this Term, in Almendarez-Torres v. United States, 523 U. S. 224 (1998), I discussed our precedents bearing on this issue and concluded that it was a grave and doubtful question whether the Constitution permits a fact that increases the maximum sentence tо which a defendant is exposed to be treated as a sentencing enhancement rather than an element of a criminal offense. See id., at 260 (dissenting opinion). I stopped short of answering that question, because I thought the doctrine of constitutional doubt required us to interpret the federal statute at issue as setting forth an element rather than an enhancement, thereby avoiding the problem. Ibid. Since the present case involves a state statute already authoritatively construed as an enhancement by the California Supreme Court, I must now answer the constitutional question. Petitioner Monge was convicted of the crime of using a minor to sell marijuana, which carries a maximum possible sentence of sevеn years in prison under California law. See
That disposition would contradict, of course, the Court‘s holding in Almendarez-Torres that “recidivism” findings do not have to be treated as elements of the offense, even if they increase the maximum punishment to which the defendant is exposed. That holding was in my view a grave constitutional error affecting the most fundamental of rights. I note, in any event, that Almendarez-Torres left open the question whether “enhancements” that increase the maximum sentence and that do not involve the defendant‘s prior criminal history are valid. That qualification is an implicit limitation on the Court‘s holding today.
I respectfully dissent.