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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.
