North Carolina v. Pearce

Mr. Justice Stewart delivered the opinion of the Court.

When at the behest of the defendant a criminal conviction has been set aside and a new trial ordered, to what extent does the Constitution limit the imposition of a harsher sentence after conviction upon retrial? That is the question presented by these two cases.

In No. 413 the respondent Pearce was convicted in a North Carolina court upon a charge of assault with intent to commit rape. The trial judge sentenced him to prison for a term of 12 to 15 years. Several years later he initiated a state post-conviction proceeding which culminated in the reversal of his conviction by the Supreme Court of North Carolina, upon the ground that an involuntary confession had unconstitutionally been admitted in evidence against him, 266 N. C. 234, 145 S. E. 2d 918. He was retried, convicted, and sentenced by the trial judge to an eight-year prison term, which, when added to the time Pearce had already spent in prison, the parties agree amounted to a longer total sentence than that originally imposed.[1] The conviction and sentence were affirmed on appeal. 268 N. C. 707, 151 S. E. 2d 571. Pearce then began this habeas corpus proceeding in the United States District Court for the Eastern Dis [*?] trict of North Carolina. That court held, upon the authority of a then very recent Fourth Circuit decision, Patton v. North Carolina, 381 F. 2d 636, cert. denied, 390 U. S. 905, that the longer sentence imposed upon retrial was “unconstitutional and void.”[2] Upon the failure of the state court to resentence Pearce within 60 days, the federal court ordered his release. This order was affirmed by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, 397 F. 2d 253, in a brief per curiam judgment citing its Patton decision, and we granted certiorari. 393 U. S. 922.