302
Opinion of the Court
gressional intent is for the District Court . . . to exercise its discretion to vacate one of the underlying convictions" as well as the concurrent sentence based upon it. Id., at 864. We explained further:
"The second conviction, whose concomitant sentence is served concurrently, does not evaporate simply because of the concurrence of the sentence. The separate conviction, apart from the concurrent sentence, has potential adverse collateral consequences that may not be ignored. For example, the presence of two convictions on the record may delay the defendant's eligibility for parole or result in an increased sentence under a recidivist statute for a future offense. Moreover, the second conviction may be used to impeach the defendant's credibility and certainly carries the societal stigma accompanying any criminal conviction. See Benton v. Maryland, 395 U. S. 784, 790-791 (1969); Sibron v. New York, 392 U. S. 40, 54-56 (1968). Thus, the second conviction, even if it results in no greater sentence, is an impermissible punishment." Id., at 864-865.
Under Ball, the collateral consequences of a second conviction make it as presumptively impermissible to impose as it would be to impose any other unauthorized cumulative sentence.
The Government suggests, however, that petitioner will never be exposed to collateral consequences like those described in Ball because he is subject to multiple life sentences without possibility of release. We need not conclusively resolve the matter, for there is no doubt that the second conviction carried with it, at very least, a $50 assessment. Although petitioner did not challenge the assessment below, 18 U. S. C. § 3013 required the District Court to impose it, and the assessment was therefore as much a collateral consequence of the conspiracy conviction as the con-
Page: Index Previous 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007