In Rummel v. Estelle
The justice system determines the evaluation of maintaining a defendant’s competency to stand trial. Competency standards over the years in debate over court proceedings have been debated over the years. Competency standards in relation to nearly every aspect of criminal case proceedings have been discussed at some point. It is paramount that a defendant understands his fundamental rights in order for his order to stand trial. The charges against them, possible pleas, the potential penalties, and a basic idea of the roles that all members of the court held. In this case, we are going to take a look at an example by Rummel v. Estelle
In Rummel v. Estelle, a man is charged with life in prison for committing a felony on three different occasions. Under Texas state law, this is grounds for the death penalty or life in the penitentiary. The main legal question brought up is whether or not the punishment fits the crime committed. While these were considered felonies, in total, each sentence would accumulate 25 years of prison time, but Rummel is being sentenced to life (Rummel vs. Estelle, page 4). Rummel has made the claim that by sentencing him to life in a penitentiary, it is in direct violation of his eighth amendment right, deeming it cruel and unusual punishment.
One argument made by Rummel is that his crimes are “petty,” as none of them have included any acts of violence, but the presence of violence doesn’t necessarily have any effect on the sentencing for a crime that has been committed (Rummel vs. Estelle, page 5). Rummel also brings up the amount of money the last felony he had committed, stealing $120.75 for his third offense would amount to the same prison sentence if he had stolen thousands, and claims that the lines are drawn are subjective (Rummel vs. Estelle, page 4). However, the court doesn’t take into consideration the amount stolen as a life imprisonment sentence, but instead, the fact Rummel had already had two separate felony convictions, and he proceeded to commit a third. This decision was driven by the interest of giving a harsher punishment for those who have habitually repeated criminal acts and “are incapable of conforming to the norms of society” (Rummel vs. Estelle, page 4).
Recidivist law supports the action of punishing those who are deemed repeat offenders in a harsher way than those who have committed first offenses, no matter how “petty” the crime. Deterrence is a theory that stems from a behavioral, psychological standpoint, deterring criminal activity through the fear of punishment or retribution (Deterrence, page 35). By enacting the recidivist law, it should theoretically deter criminals from becoming repeat offenders as the more times they commit a crime, the harsher the punishment will be. Some have speculated that providing harsher punishments is one way of enacting the theory of deterrence.
There are two subsets of deterrence, macro-deterrence (general deterrence) and micro-deterrence (specific deterrence). Macro-deterrence is aimed at focusing on crime as a whole in society and what steps can be taken in order to prevent it from happening. Within deterrence, there are also different forms, such as fear, incapacitation, and reform (Deterrence, page 36). We can see in Rummel v. Estelle that the recidivist law enacts macro-deterrence to focus on preventing crime as a whole through the use of fear and inevitable punishment if one keeps breaking laws. The idea behind deterrence is crime reduction, and that’s similar to the recidivist law; the more crimes you commit, the more severe your punishment will be, and no one wants a severe punishment (Deterrence, page 36). It’s also seen within this case that Rehnquist supports this theory with his enforcement of the recidivist law as he himself claims that the point of it is to deter repeat offenders in his closing statement (Rummel vs. Estelle, page 7).
As for the dissenting opinion, they are assuming that the use of retributivism in their argument. They claim that the severity of the crimes committed are not proportional to the punishment he is being given. Retributivism believes that in order to punish someone effectively, we must look at what they have done and draw from that a punishment that is justified based on the crime (Retributivism, page 16). Therefore, the dissenting opinion argues that the punishment given to Rummel based on his offenses is cruel and unusual, violating his eighth amendment right, despite the recidivist law put in place by the state of Texas (Rummel vs. Estelle, page 7)
References
Costanzo, M., & Krauss, D. (2012).Competency to Stand Trial.Forensic and legal psychology:
psychological science applied to the law (pp. 163-169). New York, NY: Worth Publishers.
Salvador godinez, warden, petitioner v. richardallanmoran. In LexisNexisAcademic: Document.
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Hansen, D. R. (1992). What Standard of Competency Governs a Defendant’s Decision to Plead Guilty to a State Criminal Charge and to Waive His Right to Counsel (92-725). Preview US Sup. Ct. Cas., 331.