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The state trial judge sentenced respondent as a persistent offender following his conviction on three robbery counts, but the Missouri Court of Appeals reversed the sentence because there was no proof of prior convictions, as is necessary to establish persistent offender status under state law. On remand, the trial judge resentenced respondent as a persistent offender based on evidence of prior felony convictions, rejecting his contention that allowing the State another opportunity to prove such convictions violated the Double Jeopardy Clause. In affirming, the State Court of Appeals agreed that there was no double jeopardy bar, as did the Federal District Court, which denied respondent's habeas corpus petition. However, in reversing, the Federal Court of Appeals extended the rationale of Bullington v. Missouri,
Held:
O'CONNOR, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which REHNQUIST, C.J., and BLACKMUN, SCALIA, KENNEDY, SOUTER, THOMAS, and GINSBURG, JJ., joined. STEVENS, J., filed a dissenting opinion. [ CASPARI v. BOHLEN, ___ U.S. ___ (1994) , 1]
JUSTICE O'CONNOR delivered the opinion of the Court.
In Bullington v. Missouri,
Respondent and others entered a jewelry store in St. Louis County, Missouri, on April 17, 1981. Holding store employees and customers at gunpoint, they stole money and jewelry. After a jury trial, respondent was convicted on three counts of first-degree robbery. See Mo.Rev.Stat. 569.020 (1978). The authorized punishment for that offense, a class A felony, is "a term of years not less than ten years and not to exceed thirty years, or life imprisonment." Mo.Rev.Stat. 558.011.1(1) (Supp. 1982). [ CASPARI v. BOHLEN, ___ U.S. ___ (1994) , 2]
Under Missouri law, the jury is to "assess and declare the punishment as a part of [the] verdict." 557.036.2. The judge is then to determine the punishment "having regard to the nature and circumstances of the offense and the history and character of the defendant," 557.036.1, although the sentence imposed by the judge generally cannot be more severe than the advisory sentence recommended by the jury. 557.036.3. If the trial judge finds the defendant to be a "persistent offender," however, the judge sets the punishment without seeking an advisory sentence from the jury. 557.036.4, 557.036.5. A persistent offender is any person "who has pleaded guilty to or has been found guilty of two or more felonies committed at different times." 558.016.3. The judge must find beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant is a persistent offender. 558.021. For a defendant who has committed a class A felony, a finding of persistent offender status shifts the sentencing decision from the jury to the judge, but does not alter the authorized sentencing range. 557.036.4(2), 558.016.6(1).
The trial judge in this case sentenced respondent as a persistent offender to three consecutive terms of 15 years in prison. The Missouri Court of Appeals affirmed respondent's convictions. State v. Bohlen, 670 S.W.2d 119 (1984). The state court reversed respondent's sentence, however, because "although [respondent] was sentenced by the judge as a persistent offender no proof was made of the prior convictions." Id., at 123. Following Missouri practice, see State v. Holt, 660 S.W.2d 735, 738-739 (Mo. App. 1983), the court remanded for proof of those convictions and resentencing.
On remand, the State introduced evidence of four prior felony convictions. Rejecting respondent's contention that allowing the State another opportunity to prove his prior convictions violated the Double Jeopardy Clause, [ CASPARI v. BOHLEN, ___ U.S. ___ (1994) , 3] the trial judge found respondent to be a persistent offender and again sentenced him to three consecutive 15-year terms. App. A-29, A-35. The Missouri Court of Appeals affirmed: "The question of double jeopardy was not involved, because those provisions of the Fifth Amendment have been held not to apply to sentencing." State v. Bohlen, 698 S.W.2d 577, 578 (1985), citing State v. Lee, 660 S.W.2d 394, 399 (Mo.App. 1983). The Missouri Court of Appeals subsequently affirmed the trial court's denial of respondent's motion for postconviction relief. Bohlen v. State, 743 S.W.2d 425 (1987).
In 1989, respondent filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri. The District Court, adopting the report and recommendation of a Magistrate, denied the petition. App. to Pet. for Cert. A25-A26. The court rejected respondent's contention that the Double Jeopardy Clause barred the State from introducing evidence of respondent's prior convictions at the second sentencing hearing. Id., at A37-A49.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit reversed. 979 F.2d 109 (1992). Based on its conclusion that "[t]he persistent offender sentenc[e] enhancement procedure in Missouri has protections similar to those in the capital sentencing hearing in Bullington," id., at 112, the court stated that "it is a short step to apply the same double jeopardy protection to a noncapital sentencing hearing as the Supreme Court applied to a capital sentenc[ing] . . . hearing." Id., at 113. The court held that taking that step did not require the announcement of a "new rule" of constitutional law, and thus that granting habeas relief to respondent would not violate the nonretroactivity principle of Teague v. Lane,
We granted certiorari, 508 U.S. ___ (1993), and now reverse.
We have consistently declined to consider issues not raised in the petition for a writ of certiorari. See this Court's Rule 14.1(a) ("Only the questions set forth in the petition, or fairly included therein, will be considered by the Court"). In Yee v. Escondido, 503 U.S. ___ (1992), for example, the question presented was whether certain governmental action had effected a physical taking of the petitioner's property; we held that the question whether the same action had effected a regulatory taking, while "related" and "complementary" to the question presented, was not fairly included therein. Id., at ___ (slip op., at 15-16). In Izumi Seimitsu Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha v. U.S. Philips Corp., 510 U.S. ___ (1993) (per curiam), the question presented in the petition was whether the courts of appeals should routinely vacate district court judgments when cases are settled while on appeal; we held that the "analytically and factually" distinct issue whether the petitioner was improperly denied leave to intervene in the court below was not fairly included in the question presented. Id., at ___ (slip op., at 5). See also American National Bank & Trust Co. of Chicago v. Haroco, Inc.,
The primary question presented in the petition for a writ of certiorari in this case was "[w]hether the Double Jeopardy Clause . . . should apply to successive noncapital sentence enhancement proceedings." Pet. for Cert. 1. The State argues that answering that question in the affirmative would require the announcement of a new rule of constitutional law in violation of Teague and subsequent cases. We conclude that this issue is a [ CASPARI v. BOHLEN, ___ U.S. ___ (1994) , 5] subsidiary question fairly included in the question presented.
The nonretroactivity principle prevents a federal court from granting habeas corpus relief to a state prisoner based on a rule announced after his conviction and sentence became final. See, e. g., Stringer v. Black, 503 U.S. ___, ___ (1992) (slip op., at 5). A threshold question in every habeas case, therefore, is whether the court is obligated to apply the Teague rule to the defendant's claim. We have recognized that the nonretroactivity principle "is not `jurisdictional' in the sense that [federal courts] . . . must raise and decide the issue sua sponte." Collins v. Youngblood,
In this case, the State argued in the petition, as it had in the courts below and as it does in its brief on the merits, that the nonretroactivity principle barred the relief sought by respondent. In contrast to Yee, which involved a claim that was related but not subsidiary, and Izumi, in which the intervention question was a procedural one wholly divorced from the question on which we granted review, the Teague issue raised by the State in this case is a necessary predicate to the resolution of the question presented in the petition. Cf. Cuyler v. Sullivan,
A state conviction and sentence become final for purposes of retroactivity analysis when the availability of direct appeal to the state courts has been exhausted and the time for filing a petition for a writ of certiorari has elapsed or a timely filed petition has been finally denied. See Griffith v. Kentucky,
In reviewing the state of the law on that date, we note that it was well established that there is no double jeopardy bar to the use of prior convictions in sentencing a persistent offender. Spencer v. Texas,
At first blush, respondent's argument would appear to be foreclosed by the fact that "[h]istorically, the pronouncement of sentence has never carried the finality that attaches to an acquittal." United States v. DiFrancesco,
Respondent acknowledges our traditional refusal to extend the Double Jeopardy Clause to sentencing, but
[ CASPARI v. BOHLEN, ___ U.S. ___ (1994)
, 8]
contends that a different result is compelled in this case by Bullington v. Missouri,
Both Bullington and Rumsey were capital cases, and our reasoning in those cases was based largely on the unique circumstances of a capital sentencing proceeding. In Bullington itself, we distinguished our contrary precedents, particularly DiFrancesco, on the ground that "[t]he history of sentencing practices is of little assistance to Missouri in this case, since the sentencing procedures for capital cases instituted after the decision in Furman [v. Georgia,
In Strickland v. Washington,
While our cases may not have foreclosed the application of the Double Jeopardy Clause to noncapital sentencing, neither did any of them apply the Clause in that context. On the contrary, Goldhammer and Strickland strongly suggested that Bullington was limited to capital sentencing. We therefore conclude that a reasonable jurist reviewing our precedents at the time respondent's conviction and sentence became final would not have considered the application of the Double Jeopardy Clause to a noncapital sentencing proceeding to be dictated by our precedents. Cf. Stringer v. Black, 503 U.S., at ___ (slip op., at 13). [ CASPARI v. BOHLEN, ___ U.S. ___ (1994) , 10]
This analysis is confirmed by the experience of the lower courts. Prior to the time respondent's conviction and sentence became final, one Federal Court of Appeals and two state courts of last resort had held that the Double Jeopardy Clause did not bar the introduction of evidence of prior convictions at resentencing in noncapital cases, Linam v. Griffin, 685 F.2d 369, 374-376 (CA10 1982); Durham v. State, 464 N. E. 2d 321, 323-326 (Ind. 1984); People v. Sailor, 65 N. Y. 2d 224, 231-236, 480 N. E. 2d 701, 706-710 (1985), while another Federal Court of Appeals and two other state courts of last resort had held to the contrary, Briggs v. Procunier, 764 F.2d 368, 371 (CA5 1985); State v. Hennings, 100 Wash. 2d 379, 386-390, 670 P.2d 256, 259-262 (1983); Cooper v. State, 631 S.W.2d 508, 513-514 (Tex. Crim. App. 1982). Moreover, the Missouri Court of Appeals had previously rejected precisely the same claim raised by respondent. State v. Lee, 660 S.W.2d, at 399-400.
In its retroactivity analysis, the Court of Appeals dismissed the Tenth Circuit's decision in Linam as "ultimately based on trial error," 979 F.2d, at 114, failing to recognize that the Linam court offered two "alternative bas[e]s for decision," 685 F.2d, at 374 - the second being that the "uniqueness of the death penalty unquestionably serves to distinguish DiFrancesco from Bullington." Id., at 375. Nor did the Court of Appeals acknowledge the relevant portion of the Lee decision, in which a Missouri court held that "the death penalty second stage trial in a capital murder case bears no similarity to a determination of persistent offender status by a judge upon the basis of largely formal evidence." 660 S.W.2d, at 400. Instead, the court focused on whether there was any "federal holding resting squarely on the proposition that Bullington does not apply to noncapital sentenc[e] enhancement proceedings." 979 F.2d, at 114 (emphasis added). [ CASPARI v. BOHLEN, ___ U.S. ___ (1994) , 11]
At oral argument in this Court, counsel for respondent candidly admitted that he did not know "exactly what State courts had decided or when" with respect to the applicability of the Double Jeopardy Clause to noncapital sentencing. Tr. of Oral Arg. 31. In fact, two state courts had held the Double Jeopardy Clause inapplicable to noncapital sentencing prior to 1986. Durham v. State, supra; People v. Sailor, supra. Constitutional law is not the exclusive province of the federal courts, and in the Teague analysis the reasonable views of state courts are entitled to consideration along with those of federal courts. See Butler v. McKellar,
In sum, at the time respondent's conviction and sentence became final, this Court had not applied the Double Jeopardy Clause to noncapital sentencing, and indeed several of our cases pointed in the opposite direction. Two Federal Courts of Appeals and several state courts had reached conflicting holdings on the issue. Because that conflict concerned a "developmen[t] in the law over which reasonable jurists [could] disagree," Sawyer v. Smith,
Finally, to the limited extent our cases decided subsequent to the time respondent's conviction and sentence became final have any relevance to the Teague analysis, cf. Graham v. Collins, 506 U.S., at ___, they are entirely consistent with our conclusion that the Court of Appeals announced a new rule in this case. See Lockhart v. Nelson,
Neither of the two narrow exceptions to the nonretroactivity principle applies to this case. The first exception is for new rules that place "certain kinds of primary, private individual conduct beyond the power of the criminal lawmaking authority to proscribe." Teague v. Lane,
The Court of Appeals recognized that it was a "stretch" to apply the Double Jeopardy Clause to a noncapital sentencing proceeding, 979 F.2d, at 115, one that required "[e]xtending" the rationale of Bullington, ibid., but held that, because it was only a "short step," id., at 113, the nonretroactivity principle was not violated. We disagree. The Court of Appeals erred in directing the District Court to grant respondent a writ of habeas corpus because doing so required the announcement and application of a new rule of constitutional law. Because of our resolution of this case on Teague grounds, we have no occasion to decide whether the Double Jeopardy Clause applies to noncapital sentencing, or whether Missouri's persistent offender scheme is sufficiently trial-like to invoke double jeopardy protections; nor need we consider the State's contention that Bullington should be overruled.
Reversed. [ CASPARI v. BOHLEN, ___ U.S. ___ (1994) , 1]
JUSTICE STEVENS, dissenting.
The nonretroactivity principle announced in the plurality opinion in Teague v. Lane,
Distinguishing Izumi, the Court explains that the intervention question in that case was "wholly divorced from the question on which we granted review," whereas here the Teague issue "is a necessary predicate to the resolution of the question presented in the petition." Ante, at 5. Yet Izumi itself opened by acknowledging that it "would have to address" the intervention issue [ CASPARI v. BOHLEN, ___ U.S. ___ (1994) , 2] "[i]n order to reach the merits of this case." 510 U.S., at ___ (slip op., at 1). It is no more "necessary" to answer the Teague question in this case than it was, for example, in Collins, supra.
On the merits, I agree with the Court of Appeals. Under Missouri law, courts must make findings of fact that persistent offender status is warranted for those convicted of certain offenses when the prosecutor establishes requisite facts by proof beyond a reasonable doubt. 8 That status subjects the defendant to more severe sentences, Mo.Rev.Stat. 558.016.1 (Supp. 1982), and deprives him of the opportunity to have a jury sentence him. 557.036.2. The sentence enhancement thus has the same legal effect as conviction of a separate offense; the separate sentencing hearing likewise is the practical equivalent of the trial. Missouri law acknowledges as much by properly requiring prosecutors to prove the factual predicate for the enhanced sentence beyond a reasonable doubt.
A defendant opposing such an enhancement undoubtedly has a constitutional right to counsel and to the basic procedural protections the Due Process Clause affords. I have no hesitation in concluding that these protections include the right not to be "twice put in jeopardy" for the same offense. U.S. Const., Amdt. 5. I would affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.
[ Footnote * ] Mo.Rev.Stat. 558.021.1(2) (Supp. 1982). A "persistent offender" had previously been adjudged guilty of two or more felonies committed at different times. 558.016.3. Missouri also mandates an enhanced sentence if the prosecutor proves that the defendant is a "dangerous offender" - meaning one who is being sentenced for a felony during which he knowingly "murdered or endangered or threatened the life" of another, who "knowingly inflicted or attempted or threatened to inflict serious physical injury" on another, or who is guilty of certain felonies. 558.016.4. It is unfair to afford the prosecutor two opportunities to satisfy either provision. Page I
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Citation: 510 U.S. 383
No. 92-1500
Argued: December 06, 1993
Decided: February 23, 1994
Court: United States Supreme Court
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