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Resentencing Defendants and the Protection Against Multiple Punishment

NCJ Number
117414
Journal
University of Pennsylvania Law Review Volume: 133 Issue: 6 Dated: (July 1985) Pages: 1409-1432
Author(s)
M P Doss
Date Published
1985
Length
24 pages
Annotation
This discussion of double jeopardy concludes that a criminal defendant who has successfully appealed certain counts of a conviction involving multiple counts cannot be subjected to harsher sentences on the remaining counts without breaching the multiple punishment protection of the double jeopardy clause of the Constitution.
Abstract
The Courts of Appeals for the Second, Third, Sixth, and Seventh Circuits have held that the constitutional guarantee against double jeopardy does not preclude vacating the sentences on the remaining counts and remanding the case to the trial court for resentencing, expressly allowing for an increase of the sentences on the affirmed counts. Thus, in United States v. Moore, the defendant, who had received consecutive sentences of 15 and 25 years imprisonment for bank robbery and kidnapping convictions, was resentenced to 40 years on the kidnapping conviction after the appellate court held the bank robbery charge to be improper. The Supreme Court has not addressed the issue of whether increasing sentences on remaining valid counts is barred by the double jeopardy clause. However, its opinion in United States v. DiFrancesco in 1980 resulted in a sharp change in opinion by the courts of appeal, which previously assumed that the double jeopardy protection prohibited such an increase in sentences. However, this change resulted from a misunderstanding of the constitutional values that underlie the prohibition of multiple punishment and that inform the scope of its protections. Prohibiting increases of a final legal sentence when the underlying conviction is maintained is necessary to avoid abuses of judicial power and to respect the defendant's interest in finality. 126 footnotes.

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