Witte v. United States, 515 U.S. 389, 12 (1995)

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400

WITTE v. UNITED STATES

Opinion of the Court

clude that taking account of petitioner's plans to import cocaine in fixing the sentence for the marijuana conviction constituted "punishment" for the cocaine offenses.

Williams, like this case, concerned the double jeopardy implications of taking the circumstances surrounding a particular course of criminal activity into account in sentencing for a conviction arising therefrom. Similarly, we have made clear in other cases, which involved a defendant's background more generally and not conduct arising out of the same criminal transaction as the offense of which the defendant was convicted, that "[e]nhancement statutes, whether in the nature of criminal history provisions such as those contained in the Sentencing Guidelines, or recidivist statutes which are common place in state criminal laws, do not change the penalty imposed for the earlier conviction." Nichols, 511 U. S., at 747 (approving consideration of a defendant's previous uncounseled misdemeanor conviction in sentencing him for a subsequent offense). In repeatedly upholding such recidivism statutes, we have rejected double jeopardy challenges because the enhanced punishment imposed for the later offense "is not to be viewed as either a new jeopardy or additional penalty for the earlier crimes," but instead as "a stiffened penalty for the latest crime, which is considered to be an aggravated offense because a repetitive one." Gryger v. Burke, 334 U. S. 728, 732 (1948). See also Spencer v. Texas, 385 U. S. 554, 560 (1967); Oyler v. Boles, 368 U. S. 448, 451 (1962); Moore v. Missouri, 159 U. S. 673, 677 (1895) (under a recidivist statute, "the accused is not again punished for the first offence" because " 'the punishment is for the last offence committed, and it is rendered more severe in consequence of the situation into which the party had previously brought himself' ").

In addition, by authorizing the consideration of offenderspecific information at sentencing without the procedural protections attendant at a criminal trial, our cases necessarily imply that such consideration does not result in "punish-

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