Joseph Levine v. Courtland C. Peyton, Superintendent of the Virginia State Penitentiary

The Commonwealth of Virginia appeals from an order of the district court granting habeas corpus relief to Joseph Levine. We affirm.

After our opinions in Patton v. North Carolina, 381 F.2d 636 (4th Cir. 1967), and May v. Peyton, 398 F.2d 476 (4th Cir. 1968), the district court found that Levine’s constitutional rights had been violated by the imposition of a harsher sentence by a jury after his retrial. The district court granted the writ conditioned on the Commonwealth’s failure to resentence Levine to a sentence not in excess of ten years imprisonment, the sentence he received at his first…