Caseflicks

Supreme Court of the United States • 1978

Bordenkircher v. Hayes

434 U.S. 357 | 98 S. Ct. 663 | 54 L. Ed. 2d 604 | 1978 U.S. LEXIS 56

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Takeaway

In short, this case holds that a prosecutor may threaten and pursue a more serious, probable-cause-supported charge during plea negotiations when the defendant is given a clear choice between accepting the plea and going to trial.

Background

Paul Lewis Hayes was indicted in Kentucky for uttering a forged check worth $88.30, an offense carrying a two-to-ten-year prison term. During plea negotiations, the prosecutor offered to recommend a five-year sentence if Hayes pleaded guilty. The prosecutor also expressly warned that, if Hayes insisted on trial, he would seek a new indictment under Kentucky’s Habitual Criminal Act. Because Hayes had two prior felony convictions, that charge would require a life sentence.

Hayes rejected the offer and went to trial. The prosecutor obtained the habitual-offender indictment, and a jury convicted Hayes of forgery and found the two prior felonies. Hayes received the mandatory life sentence. The parties agreed that the habitual-offender charge was supported by the evidence and that the prosecutor possessed that evidence when the original indictment was filed.

Kentucky’s appellate court upheld the conviction and sentence, and the federal district court denied habeas relief. The Sixth Circuit reversed, reasoning that the prosecutor had acted vindictively by escalating the charge after Hayes refused to plead guilty, contrary to the due-process principles of North Carolina v. Pearce and Blackledge v. Perry. The Supreme Court granted certiorari and reversed the Sixth Circuit.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether due process prohibits a prosecutor from carrying out an announced threat during plea bargaining to bring a more serious charge if the defendant declines to plead guilty to the original charge.

Holding

No. Due process is not violated when a prosecutor openly presents a defendant with the choice of pleading guilty or facing an additional charge that is supported by probable cause.

Reasoning

The Court stressed that Hayes knew the actual terms of the offer before making his choice. The prosecutor announced from the beginning that refusal to plead guilty would lead him to seek the habitual-offender indictment. Thus, this was not a case in which the State surprised a defendant with a more serious charge only after plea discussions had failed.

The Court distinguished North Carolina v. Pearce and Blackledge v. Perry. Those cases barred a realistic likelihood that the State had retaliated against a defendant for exercising a legal right to attack an existing conviction. In contrast, plea bargaining is a pretrial negotiation in which each side seeks an advantage and the defendant remains free to accept or reject the prosecutor’s offer.

Plea bargaining necessarily involves difficult choices. A defendant may plead guilty because the prosecutor offers a lower charge or a more lenient sentencing recommendation, and because trial carries the risk of a harsher outcome. That pressure may discourage insistence on a trial, but the Court regarded it as an inevitable and constitutionally permissible feature of a system that permits negotiated pleas.

The habitual-offender charge was legally available: Hayes had two qualifying prior felony convictions, and the prosecutor had probable cause to pursue the charge. Ordinarily, a prosecutor has broad discretion to decide whether to prosecute and what charge to bring, subject to constitutional constraints such as the prohibition on selective enforcement based on race, religion, or another unjustifiable classification.

Treating a prosecutor’s desire to obtain a guilty plea as an impermissible charging criterion would conflict with the premise of plea bargaining itself. The Court also reasoned that forbidding candid disclosure of the alternatives could encourage prosecutors to bargain indirectly or conceal their intentions rather than deal openly with defendants and counsel.

The Court limited its holding to the conduct before it. It did not deny that prosecutorial discretion can be abused or that constitutional limits apply to charging decisions. It held only that openly offering Hayes the choice between a plea and prosecution on a charge for which he was plainly subject to prosecution was not unconstitutional.

Dissents

Justice Blackmun

Reasoning

Justice Blackmun, joined by Justices Brennan and Marshall, concluded that the majority improperly narrowed the anti-vindictiveness principles of Pearce and Blackledge. In his view, due process forbids prosecutorial vindictiveness regardless of whether it appears after an appeal or during plea bargaining.

Here, the prosecutor admitted that he obtained the habitual-offender indictment because Hayes refused to give up his right to trial. That admission established retaliation directly; even without it, the shift from a lesser charge to a much more serious charge after failed negotiations would strongly support an inference of vindictiveness.

Justice Blackmun rejected the majority’s view that plea bargaining eliminates the retaliatory character of the prosecutor’s conduct. A defendant’s formal freedom to accept or reject an offer does not make it constitutionally acceptable for the State to impose, or threaten to impose, a substantially harsher charge solely to penalize the exercise of the trial right.

He acknowledged that a contrary rule could encourage prosecutors to bring the greatest possible charge at the outset and later bargain it down. But he believed it was still better to require the State to stand by the charge it originally considered appropriate and to make charging practices more visible and accountable.

Justice Powell

Reasoning

Justice Powell agreed that plea bargaining is essential and that prosecutors ordinarily need broad discretion. But he concluded that this exceptional case crossed the constitutional line because the prosecutor candidly admitted that the enhanced indictment was intended to discourage Hayes from exercising his constitutional right to trial.

The disparity underscored the unfairness. Hayes was charged with passing a single $88.30 forged check, yet his refusal of a five-year plea offer led to a mandatory life sentence under the habitual-offender statute. In Justice Powell’s view, the prosecutor’s original decision not to invoke that statute suggested that using it in these circumstances was not a reasonable or public-interest-based charging decision.

Justice Powell would ask whether the prosecutor reasonably could have brought the enhanced charge at the outset. Courts generally could not meaningfully examine a prosecutor’s initial charging choice, but this record made an inquiry possible because the prosecutor expressly identified Hayes’s insistence on trial as the reason for the new indictment.

A State may not employ charging and sentencing power solely to deter the assertion of constitutional rights. Because the prosecutor’s admitted strategy was first to discourage Hayes’s choice of trial and then to punish that choice with extraordinary severity, Justice Powell would have affirmed the Sixth Circuit.