Lockyer V. Andrade - Majority Opinion

Majority Opinion

Although this case involved the same legal claim as Ewing v. California, 538 U.S. 11 (2003), its procedural posture was different. Ewing was a case on direct review from the California state court system, meaning that the Supreme Court was deciding in the first instance whether a three-strikes sentence was cruel and unusual punishment. If the defendant in Ewing had prevailed in the Supreme Court, he would have received a new sentencing hearing. Andrade, by contrast, was an appeal from a federal habeas petition. If the Court was to reach the same result in Andrade as it did in Ewing, it had to travel a different path to arrive there.

Because of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, the Court could not grant relief unless the decision of the state courts to uphold Andrade's sentence was "contrary to, or an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States". This meant that the Court's first task was to identify what that "clearly established" law was. The Court examined its prior holdings, and found three that were relevant—Rummel v. Estelle, 445 U.S. 263 (1980); Solem v. Helm, 463 U.S. 277 (1983); and Harmelin v. Michigan, 501 U.S. 957 (1991). Although these precedents were not a "model of clarity", the Court concluded that a "gross disproportionality principle is applicable to sentences for terms of years", but that the "precise contours" of this principle were unclear and applied only in the "exceedingly rare and extreme case". In Solem, the sentence did not allow for parole, and the Court had held it was cruel and unusual; in Rummel, the sentence did allow for parole, and the Court had held it was not cruel and unusual. In this case, like in Rummel, Andrade retained the opportunity for parole, even if that possibility was remote. Because the gross disproportionality principle applied in only an extreme case, the Court concluded that the California courts did not unreasonably apply it to Andrade's sentence.