Supreme Court Digest
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Recent Decisions
This column summarizes all decisions of the
Wisconsin Supreme Court (except those involving lawyer or judicial
discipline, which are digested elsewhere in the magazine). Full-text decisions are available on WisBar's legal resources page.
Profs. Daniel D. Blinka and Thomas J. Hammer invite comments and
questions about the digests. They can be reached at Marquette University
Law School, 1103 W. Wisconsin Ave., Milwaukee, WI 53233, (414)
288-7090.
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Criminal Procedure
Wisconsin's "Three Strikes" Law - Challenges to the Validity
of Prior Convictions at the Enhanced Sentence Proceeding
State v. Hahn, 2000 WI 118
(filed 1 Nov. 2000)
The defendant pled guilty to two counts of sexual assault of a child.
He had two prior convictions for the same offense and received a life
sentence on the current charges without the possibility of parole under
the persistence repeater statute (Wis. Stat. § 939.62(2m)
(1997-98)). This statute is commonly known as Wisconsin's "three
strikes" law.
The supreme court in this appeal first considered whether the U.S.
Constitution requires that an offender be permitted during an enhanced
sentence proceeding predicated on a prior conviction to challenge the
prior conviction as unconstitutional because the conviction was
allegedly based on a guilty plea that was not knowing, intelligent, and
voluntary. In a unanimous decision authored by Chief Justice Abrahamson,
the supreme court concluded that an offender does not have a federal
constitutional right to use the enhanced sentence proceeding predicated
on a prior state conviction as the forum in which to challenge the prior
conviction, except when the offender alleges that a violation of the
constitutional right to a lawyer occurred in the prior state conviction.
The court further concluded that, as a matter of judicial
administration, an offender may not use the enhanced sentence proceeding
predicated on a prior conviction as the forum in which to challenge the
prior conviction, except when the offender alleges that a violation of
the constitutional right to a lawyer occurred in the prior state
conviction.
Instead, the offender may use whatever other means are available
under state law to challenge the validity of a prior conviction in a
forum other than the enhanced sentence proceeding. If successful, he or
she may seek to reopen the enhanced sentence. If the offender has no
means available under state law or is unsuccessful in challenging the
prior conviction, the offender may nevertheless seek to reopen the
enhanced sentence. However, said the court, "we do not address the
appropriate disposition of any such application" (¶28).
Finally, the court considered and rejected the defendant's argument
that the persistent repeater penalty enhancer, as applied to him,
violates the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual
punishment.
Wisconsin Lawyer
