Hutto v. Davis

454 U.S. 370, 102 S. Ct. 703, 70 L. Ed. 2d 556, 1982 U.S. LEXIS 57

• Court: Supreme Court of the United States
• Decided: March 22, 1982
• Docket: 81-23
• Status: Published

Opinions

Per Curiam.

On October 26, 1973, law enforcement officers raided respondent’s home and seized approximately nine ounces of marihuana and assorted drug paraphernalia. Several days before the raid, officers had tape-recorded a transaction in which respondent had sold marihuana and other controlled substances to a police informant. With the aid of the seized evidence and the tape recording, respondent was convicted in Virginia state court of possession with intent to distribute and distribution of marihuana. The jury imposed a fine of $10,000 and a prison term of 20 years on each of the two counts, the prison terms to run consecutively. At the time of respondent’s conviction, Virginia law authorized fines of up to $25,000 and prison terms of not less than 5 nor more than 40 years for each of respondent’s offenses. Davis v. Davis, 585 F. 2d 1226, 1229 (CA4 1978).

After exhausting direct appeal, respondent brought a ha-beas action in the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia, asserting that a 40-year sentence was so grossly disproportionate to the crime of possessing less than nine ounces of marihuana that it constituted cruel and unusual punishment as proscribed by the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. The District Court, relying primarily upon the four factors set forth in Hart v. Coiner, 483 F. 2d 136 (CA4 1973), cert. denied, 415 U. S. 938 (1974), agreed:

“After examining the nature of the offense, the legislative purpose behind the punishment, the punishment in the Commonwealth of Virginia for other offenses, and the punishment actually imposed for the same or similar offenses in Virginia, this court must necessarily conclude that a sentence of forty years and twenty thousand dollars in fines is so grossly out of proportion to the severity of the crimes as to constitute cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution.” Davis v. Zahradnick, 432 F. Supp. 444, 453 (1977).

Accordingly, the District Court issued a writ of habeas corpus.

A panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reversed. Davis v. Davis, supra. The panel correctly noted that this Court “has never found a sentence for a term of years within the limits authorized by statute to be, by itself, a cruel and unusual punishment,” 585 F. 2d, at 1229, and held that respondent had failed to show that his sentence, in light of the factors known to the jury¹ and the punishment authorized by Virginia, was sufficiently extraordinary to violate the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. Id., at 1233. The decision was short-lived. Sitting en banc, the Court of Appeals reheard the case and, “for reasons sufficiently stated by the district judge in his opinion,” affirmed the award of habeas relief. Davis v. Davis, 601 F. 2d 153, 154 (1979). We granted certiorari, vacated the judgment of the Court of Appeals, and remanded the case for reconsideration in light of our decision in Rummel v. Estelle, 445 U. S. 263 (1980). Sub nom. Hutto v. Davis, 445 U. S. 947 (1980). The Court of Appeals again affirmed the District Court, this time by an equally divided vote. Davis v. Davis, 646 F. 2d 123 (1981). Because the Court of Appeals failed to heed our decision in Rummel, we now reverse.

The petitioner in Rummel was sentenced to life imprisonment under the Texas recidivist statute upon being convicted of his third felony: obtaining $120.75 by false pretenses. He had previously been convicted of passing a forged check in the amount of $28.36, and of fraudulently using a credit card to obtain $80 worth of goods or services. 445 U. S., at 265-266. Like the respondent in this case, Rummel argued that the length of his imprisonment was so “grossly disproportionate” to the crime for which he was sentenced that it violated the ban on cruel and unusual punishment of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. In rejecting that argument, we distinguished between punishments — such as the death penalty — which by their very nature differ from all other forms of conventionally accepted punishment, and punishments which differ from others only in duration. This distinction was based upon two factors. First, this “Court’s Eighth Amendment judgments should neither be nor appear to be merely the subjective views of individual Justices.” Id., at 275. And second, the excessiveness of one prison term as compared to another is invariably a subjective determination, there being no clear way to make “any constitutional distinction between one term of years and a shorter or longer term of years.” Ibid. Thus, we concluded that “one could argue without fear of contradiction by any decision of this Court that for crimes concededly classified and classifiable as felonies, . . . the length of the sentence actually imposed is purely a matter of legislative prerogative.” Id., at 274. Accordingly, we held that Rummel’s life sentence did not violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

As mentioned above, the District Court found respondent’s sentence to be unconstitutional by applying the four-part test of Hart v. Coiner, supra. Hart also was relied upon by the lower-court dissenters in Rummel, and was implicitly disapproved by our rejection of the dissenters’ view. Not only did we expressly recognize Hart as the primary opposing authority, 445 U. S., at 267, 269, but our opinion also disapproved each of its four “objective” factors.² Because the District Court’s grant of habeas relief was clearly guided by these factors, the Court of Appeals erred in affirming.

In short, Rummel stands for the proposition that federal courts should be “reluctan[t] to review legislatively mandated terms of imprisonment,” id. at 274, and that “successful challenges to the proportionality of particular sentences” should be “exceedingly rare,” id. at 272.³ By affirming the District Court decision after our decision in Rummel, the Court of Appeals sanctioned an intrusion into the basic line-drawing process that is “properly within the province of legislatures, not courts.” Id., at 275-276. More importantly, however, the Court of Appeals could be viewed as having ignored, consciously or unconsciously, the hierarchy of the federal court system created by the Constitution and Congress. Admittedly, the Members of this Court decide cases “by virtue of their commissions, not their competence.” And arguments may be made one way or the other whether the present case is distinguishable, except as to its facts, from Rummel. But unless we wish anarchy to prevail within the federal judicial system, a precedent of this Court must be followed by the lower federal courts no matter how misguided the judges of those courts may think it to be.

Accordingly, the petition for a writ of certiorari is granted, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded to the District Court with instructions to dismiss respondent’s habeas petition.

It is so ordered.

1 In addition to the evidence seized during the raid and the tape recording of the drug transaction, all of which demonstrated that respondent was an active drug dealer, the jury knew from evidence presented at trial that respondent had knowingly sold drugs to be smuggled into prison, had sold drugs to an inmate’s wife who was alone with an infant child, and had himself been imprisoned in the past. Davis v. Davis, 585 F. 2d, at 1227-1228.

2 Applying the first Hart factor to this case, the District Court found “no element of violence and minimal, debatable danger to the person.” Davis v. Zahradnick, 432 F. Supp. 444, 452 (WD Va. 1977). In Rummel, however, we noted that “the presence or absence of violence does not always affeet the strength of society’s interest in deterring a particular crime or in punishing a particular criminal.” 445 U. S., at 275. Hart’s second factor calls for an examination of the purposes behind the criminal statute and the existence of less restrictive means of effectuating those purposes. On this factor the District Court was inconclusive, but noted that the amount of marihuana involved was less than nine ounces, implying that such minimal possession could adequately be deterred with shorter prison sentences. 432 F. Supp., at 452. Such analysis was implicitly rejected by our conclusion in Rummel that the “ ‘small’ amount of money taken” was inapposite, because to acknowledge that the State could have given Rummel a life sentence for stealing some amount of money “is virtually to concede that the lines to be drawn are indeed ‘subjective,’ and therefore properly within the province of legislatures, not courts.” 445 U. S., at 275-276. Applying the third Hart factor, the District Court found that respondent’s sentence for possession with intent to distribute exceeded the maximum penalty available for that offense in all but four States, and that his sentence for distribution exceeded the maximum penalty available for that offense in all but eight States. 432 F. Supp., at 452-453. We rejected such comparison in Rummel, stating that “[ajbsent a constitutionally imposed uniformity inimical to traditional notions of federalism, some State will always bear the distinction of treating particular offenders more severely than any other State.” 445 U. S., at 282. Finally, the fourth Hart factor led the District Court to conclude that respondent’s sentence was disproportionate when compared to punishments applicable to other offenses under Virginia law. 432 F. Supp., at 453. This comparison was rejected in Rummel because “[ojther crimes . . . implicate other societal interests, making any such comparison inherently speculative.” 445 U. S., at 282, n. 27.

3 We noted in Rummel that there could be situations in which the proportionality principle would come into play, such as “if a legislature made overtime parking a felony punishable by life imprisonment.” Id., at 274, n. 11.