Moon v. Maryland
Decision Date | 08 June 1970 |
Docket Number | No. 267,267 |
Citation | 26 L.Ed.2d 262,398 U.S. 319,90 S.Ct. 1730 |
Parties | Dennis Mullene MOON, Petitioner, v. State of MARYLAND |
Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
Robert Anthony Jacques, Rockville, Md., for petitioner.
Edward F. Borgerding, Baltimore, Md., for respondent.
'When at the behest of the defendant a criminal conviction has been set aside and a new trial ordered, to what extent does the Constitution limit the imposition of a harsher sentence after conviction upon retrial?' This was the question the Court dealt with last Term in North Carolina v. Pearce, 395 U.S. 711, 89 S.Ct. 2072, 23 L.Ed.2d 656. We held in that case that there exists no absolute constitutional bar to the imposition of a harsher sentence upon retrial, but that due process 'requires 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.' Id., at 725, 89 S.Ct. at 2080. 'In order to assure the absence of such a motivation,' we held that Id., at 726, 89 S.Ct. at 2081. The Pearce case was decided on June 23, 1969.
In the present case the petitioner was found guilty of armed robbery by a Maryland jury and sentenced by the trial judge to 12 years' imprisonment. The conviction was set aside on appeal by the Maryland Court of Appeals. At a second trial for the same offense in 1966 the petitioner was again convicted, and this time the trial judge imposed a sentence of 20 years' imprisonment, less full credit for time served under the original sentence. This second conviction was affirmed on appeal. 250 Md. 468, 243 A.2d 564. We granted certiorari, 395 U.S. 975, 89 S.Ct. 2135, 23 L.Ed.2d 764, requesting counsel to brief and argue the question of the retroactivity of North Carolina v. Pearce, supra.
The facts that have emerged since the grant of certiorari impel us to dismiss the writ as improvidently granted. As an appendix to its brief, the respondent has filed an affidavit of the judge who presided at the second trial, setting out in detail the reasons he imposed the 20-year prison sentence. Those reasons clearly include 'objective information concerning identifiable conduct on the part of the defendant occurring after the time of the original sentencing proceeding.' But the dispositive development is that counsel for the petitioner has now made clear that there is no claim in this case that the due process standard of Pearce was violated. As counsel forthrightly stated in the course of oral argu- ment, 'I have never contended...
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Hardwick v. Doolittle
...have not been entirely consistent in applying the Pearce principle. In the first post-Pearce case, Moon v. Maryland, 398 U.S. 319, 90 S.Ct. 1730, 26 L.Ed.2d 262 (1970) (per curiam), the court dismissed the writ of certiorari as improvidently granted when counsel for the defendant conceded a......
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Vaccaro v. United States
...the sentencing judge must give reasons for an increased sentence after retrial, has not yet been decided. See Moon v. Maryland, 1970, 398 U.S. 319, 90 S.Ct. 1730, 26 L.Ed.2d 262. 35 Benton v. Maryland, 1969, 395 U.S. 784, 89 S.Ct. 2056, 23 L.Ed.2d 36 Kitchens v. Smith, 1971, 401 U.S. 847, 9......
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Michigan v. Payne 8212 1005
...With respect to many of them, it will not be difficult to produce evidence supporting the new sentence. As in Moon v. Maryland, 398 U.S. 319, 90 S.Ct. 1730, 26 L.Ed.2d 262 (1970), and Odom v. United States, 400 U.S. 23, 91 S.Ct. 112, 27 L.Ed.2d 122 (1970), the sentencing judge might indicat......
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State v. Fitzpatrick
...Powell: "Subsequent cases have dispelled any doubt that Pearce was premised on the hazard of vindictiveness. In Moon v. Maryland, 398 U.S. 319, 90 S.Ct. 1730, 26 L.Ed. 262 (1970), a case granted with a view to determining the retroactivity of Pearce, the Court ordered the case dismissed as ......