Blackledge v. Perry

The Court drew its central principle from North Carolina v. Pearce: a State may not penalize a defendant for pursuing a statutory right to appeal or seek postconviction relief. Pearce does not forbid every increased punishment after further proceedings; it forbids circumstances creating a realistic likelihood that vindictiveness will influence the result or deter defendants from exercising review rights.

Colten v. Kentucky and Chaffin v. Stynchcombe did not control because the risk of retaliatory motivation in those cases was minimal. In Colten, a different court imposed sentence after a de novo trial, so the new judge had no personal stake in the earlier judgment. In Chaffin, the second sentencing jury did not know the first sentence and had no institutional reason to retaliate for the appeal.

Here, the prosecutor had a substantial institutional incentive to discourage appeals from misdemeanor convictions. An appeal required additional prosecutorial resources and created the possibility that a previously convicted defendant would be acquitted. If a prosecutor could readily 'up the ante' by obtaining a felony indictment whenever a defendant appealed, defendants could be intimidated into abandoning their statutory right to a new trial.

The Court did not require proof that this prosecutor actually acted in bad faith or with malicious intent. As in Pearce, the constitutional problem was the objective danger that fear of retaliation would deter the exercise of appellate rights. A defendant must be able to seek a trial de novo without apprehension that the State will answer with a substantially more serious charge and a much greater potential period of incarceration.

The Court noted that the result could differ if the State could not have brought the more serious charge at the outset, such as where later events completed a more serious offense. But North Carolina had initially chosen to proceed on the misdemeanor, and nothing in the record showed that the felony charge had been unavailable before Perry appealed.

Under Tollett v. Henderson and the Brady guilty-plea cases, a voluntary and intelligent guilty plea generally prevents a defendant from later litigating independent constitutional violations that occurred before the plea. Ordinarily, the plea breaks the chain of prior events, leaving only a challenge to the plea's voluntariness and the adequacy of counsel's advice.

The Court held that Perry's claim was different from the ordinary antecedent constitutional claims addressed in Tollett. Those claims concerned defects that did not prevent the State from trying the defendant—for example, an improperly selected grand jury could be replaced by a properly selected one, and a case could proceed without an allegedly coerced confession.

Perry asserted a right not to be brought before the Superior Court on the felony indictment in the first place. Because the State's initiation of felony proceedings in response to his appeal itself violated due process, the defect was not merely a procedural error preceding a valid prosecution. It was comparable in practical effect to a double-jeopardy protection that prevents a trial from occurring at all.

Consequently, Perry's guilty plea could not foreclose federal habeas review of the unconstitutional felony prosecution. The Court emphasized that North Carolina remained free to provide the trial de novo on the original misdemeanor charge that Perry had sought by appealing.