People v. Stanley

By the Court, Crockett, J.: The defendant was indicted, jointly with three other persons, for the crime of robbery, and was tried separately. In the indictment it was alleged that he had previously been convicted of petit larceny. At the trial he was convicted of assault with intent to commit robbery, and the jury also found that he had been previously convicted of petit larceny as charged in the indictment. The Court thereupon sentenced him to confinement in the State Prison for fourteen years, which is the greatest punishment prescribed by the statute for an assault with an intent to commit robbery. When the prosecution offered in evidence the record of his prior conviction for petit larceny, it was objected to on the ground that Section 667 of the Penal Code, which inflicts the highest punishment prescribed by the statute, if the accused had before been convicted of petit larceny, is unconstitutional and void. The Court, however, admitted the evidence, and this ruling is assigned as error.

The clauses of the Constitution which are claimed to have been violated are those which provide, 1st, that “no per[116]son shall be subject to be twice put in jeopardy for the same offense;” and 2d, that “no cruel or unusual punishment shall be inflicted.” On the first point the argument is, that if the punishment of the second offense be increased because of a prior conviction for another offense, the accused will be twice punished for the first offense. The ready answer to the proposition is, that he is not again punished for the first offense, but the punishment for the second is increased, because by his persistence in the perpetration of crime he has evinced a depravity, which merits a greater punishment, and needs to be restrained by severer penalties than if it were his first offense.

In Virginia, they have a similar statute, and in Rand v. Commonwealth (9 Grattan, 743), Mr. Justice Daniel, in delivering the opinion of the Court, says: “No constitutional or other obstacle, however, seems to stand in the way of the Legislature’s passing an Act declaring that persons thereafter convicted of certain offenses committed after the passage of the Act may, if shown to have committed like offenses before, be subjected to greater punishment than that prescribed for those whose previous course in life does not indicate so great a degree of moral depravity. One convicted under such a statute cannot justly complain that his former transgressions have been brought up in judgment against him. He knew, or is presumed to have known, before the commission of the second offense, all the penalties denounced against it; and if in some sense the additional punishment may be said to be a consequence of the first offense (inasmuch as there could be no sentence for such punishment in the absence of proof of the first conviction) still it is not a necessary consequence, but one ■which could only arise on the conviction for the second offense, and one, therefore, which being fully apprised of in advance, the offender was left free to brave or avoid.”