NCJ Number
73765
Journal
NOTRE DAME LAWYER Volume: 55 Issue: 2 Dated: (1979) Pages: 305-315
Date Published
1979
Length
11 pages
Annotation
The Fifth Circuit Court's decision in Rummel v. Estelle is reviewed and critiqued; the court determined whether Texas' recidivist statute as applied to William Rummel was violative of the eighth amendment's prohibition against excessive punishments.
Abstract
In early 1973, William Rummel was mandatorily sentenced to life imprisonment pursuant to the Texas habitual offender statute which was then applicable. This statute provided that anyone three times convicted of a felony less than a capital offense shall be imprisoned for life. In addition to his 1973 conviction for obtaining $120.75 under false pretenses, Rummel had been convicted in 1969 for passing a forged instrument with a face value of $28.36 and in 1964 for presenting a credit card with the intent to defraud of about $80.00. Rummel's conviction was affirmed by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Soon thereafter, he applied for postconviction relief in State court, claiming that his life sentence violated the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Rummel's application was denied without a hearing, and he then petitioned the Federal district court for a writ of habeus corpus. The petition was denied and then appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. The court, by an eight-six majority found no cruel and unusual punishment in Rummel's life sentence, because under the Texas good-time credit system, a person sentenced to life imprisonment can be eligible for parole in as few as 12 years. By limiting itself to the parole issue, the court has left undecided an area of considerable importance regarding the recidivism issue: how much weight should be given to the nature of the habitual offender's crimes. Proper resolution of the issues presented in Rummel requires that the maximum possible length of sentence be used to evaluate excessiveness of imposed punishments. Footnotes are provided.