750
Souter, J., concurring in judgment
Instead of breaking the tie, the ninth Justice, Justice Blackmun, declined to accept the premise on which the others proceeded (that the prior uncounseled conviction was valid under Scott), adhering to his earlier position that an uncounseled conviction of the sort involved in Baldasar was not valid for any purpose. See 446 U. S., at 229-230 (Black-mun, J., concurring) (discussing Scott, supra, at 389-390 (Blackmun, J., dissenting)). Significantly for present purposes, Justice Blackmun gave no indication of his view on whether an uncounseled conviction, if valid under Scott, could subsequently be used for automatic sentence enhancement. On the question addressed by the other eight Justices, then, the Baldasar Court was in equipoise, leaving a decision in the same posture as an affirmance by an equally divided Court, entitled to no precedential value, see United States v. Pink, 315 U. S. 203, 216 (1942). Cf. Waters v. Churchill, ante, p. 661; ante, at 685 (Souter, J., concurring); Book Named "John Cleland's Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure" v. Attorney General of Mass., 383 U. S. 413 (1966) (discussed in Marks v. United States, 430 U. S. 188, 193-194 (1977)).
Setting Baldasar aside as controlling precedent (but retaining the case's even split as evidence), it seems safe to say that the question debated there is a difficult one. The Court in Scott, relying on Argersinger v. Hamlin, 407 U. S. 25 (1972), drew a bright line between imprisonment and lesser criminal penalties, on the theory, as I understand it, that the concern over reliability raised by the absence of counsel is tolerable when a defendant does not face the deprivation of his liberty. See Scott, supra, at 372-373; see also Arger-singer, supra, at 34-37 (discussing studies showing that "the volume of misdemeanor cases . . . may create an obsession for speedy dispositions, regardless of the fairness of the result") (footnote omitted). There is an obvious and serious argument that the line drawn in Scott is crossed when, as Justice
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