506
Souter, J., dissenting
that a sentence may not be enhanced by a conviction the defendant can show was obtained in violation of any " 'specific federal right' " (or, as Tucker put it, that a sentence may not be "founded [even] in part upon misinformation of constitutional magnitude," 404 U. S., at 447) because to do so would be to allow the underlying right to be "denied anew" and to "suffer serious erosion," Burgett, supra, at 116 (citation omitted); see also Tucker, supra, at 449. The Court's references in both Burgett and Tucker to the right discussed in Gideon is hardly surprising; that was the "specific federal right" (and the record of the conviction obtained in violation of it the "misinformation of constitutional magnitude") that the defendants before it invoked. The opinions in both cases, moreover, made it quite clear that the discussion of Gideon was not meant to supply a limitation. Burgett described Gideon not as unique but as "illustrative of the limitations which the Constitution places on state criminal procedures," and it recounted as supportive of its holding cases involving coerced confessions, denials of the confrontation right, and illegal searches and seizures, 389 U. S., at 114; and Tucker made it clear that "the real question" before the Court was whether the defendant's sentence might have been different if the sentencing judge had known that the defendant's "previous convictions had been unconstitution-ally obtained," 404 U. S., at 448.5
5 The notion that Burgett and Tucker stand for the narrow principle today's majority describes has escaped the Court twice before. In Parke v. Raley, 506 U. S. 20, 31 (1992), the Court rejected the argument that Burgett requires States to place the burden on the government during sentencing to prove the validity of prior convictions offered for enhancement. Though the underlying claim in Raley was the same as one of the claims here (that a prior conviction resulted from an invalid guilty plea), the Court did not hold Burgett inapposite as involving a violation of Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U. S. 355 (1963), but rather accepted Burgett's applicability and distinguished the case on different grounds. See 506 U. S., at 31. And in Zant v. Stephens, 462 U. S. 862 (1983), the Court described Tucker as holding that a "sentence must be set aside if the trial court
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