Career Criminal Sentencing Laws

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CAREER CRIMINAL SENTENCING LAWS

As a response to concern about violent crime, career criminal sentencing laws—commonly known as "three-strikes" laws—became popular with state legislatures and Congress during the mid-1990s. Like habitual offender statutes that have existed in this country since its inception, three-strikes laws dramatically increase the punishment for various repeat offenders. These statutes may limit parole eligibility and impose extremely long sentences, usually life in prison, even for offenders whose final "strike" is a nonviolent crime.

Three-strikes laws are subject to significant criticisms: (1) they were enacted when violent crime rates were already declining; (2) they rely on a questionable assumption that incarceration reduces crime significantly; and (3) they allocate prison resources poorly because they result in long prison sentences for nonviolent offenders and for aging felons past their peak crime years.

Despite the questionable use of resources, three-strikes laws are almost certainly constitutional. Offenders have raised two significant constitutional challenges to habitual offender statutes: (1) they violate the double jeopardy clause of the Fifth Amendment; and (2) at least some sentences are grossly disproportionate, in violation of the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

Because the Supreme Court has held that the double jeopardy clause protects against multiple punishments for the same offense, offenders have argued that recidivist sentencing statutes punish defendants for their earlier, previously punished crimes. However, courts have repeatedly reaffirmed the holding of Moore v. Missouri (1895), which upheld enhanced punishment under such a statute against a double jeopardy challenge. Among other reasons, courts reject the double jeopardy claim because the enhanced sentence is for a current offense and because the offender is more culpable in light of his continued criminal activity.

Only once has the Court found a term of imprisonment to be a violation of the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment: in solem v. helm (1983), wherein the defendant received a term of life imprisonment without benefit of parole although his record involved only nonviolent felonies. In Harmelin v. Michigan (1991), a divided Court failed to overrule Helm, but limited Helm 's application to sentences for minor, nonviolent crimes. Many three-strikes laws avoid the limited protection afforded by Helm either by providing a statutory minimum sentence that allows parole eligibility, distinguishing it from the sentence imposed in Helm, or by imposing a life sentence only on an offender with a criminal history involving violence, which brings it within Harmelin.

Michael Vitiello
(2000)