Cite as: 538 U. S. 63 (2003)
Souter, J., dissenting
statute . . . [is] to segregate").2 The State, in other words has not chosen 25 to life because of the inherent moral or social reprehensibility of the triggering offense in isolation; the triggering offense is treated so seriously, rather, because of its confirmation of the defendant's danger to society and the need to counter his threat with incapacitation. As to the length of incapacitation, the State has made a second helpful determination, that the public risk or danger posed by someone with the specified predicate record is generally addressed by incapacitation for 25 years before parole eligibility. Cal. Penal Code Ann. § 667(e)(2)(A)(ii) (West 1999). The three-strikes law, in sum, responds to a condition of the defendant shown by his prior felony record, his danger to society, and it reflects a judgment that 25 years of incapacitation prior to parole eligibility is appropriate when a defendant exhibiting such a condition commits another felony.
Whether or not one accepts the State's choice of penalogical policy as constitutionally sound, that policy cannot rea-2 Implicit in the distinction between future dangerousness and repunishment for prior crimes is the notion that the triggering offense must, within some degree, be substantial enough to bear the weight of the sentence it elicits. As triggering offenses become increasingly minor and recidivist sentences grow, the sentences advance toward double jeopardy violations. When defendants are parking violators or slow readers of borrowed library books, there is not much room for belief, even in light of a past criminal record, that the State is permanently incapacitating the defendant because of future dangerousness rather than resentencing for past offenses.
That said, I do not question the legitimacy of repeatedly sentencing a defendant in light of his criminal record: the Federal Sentencing Guidelines provide a prime example of how a sentencing scheme may take into account a defendant's criminal history without resentencing a defendant for past convictions, Witte v. United States, 515 U. S. 389, 403 (1995) (the triggering offense determines the range of possible sentences, and the past criminal record affects an enhancement of that sentence). The point is merely that the triggering offense must reasonably support the weight of even the harshest possible sentences.
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