§62-8-4. Procedure in sentencing inmates to further confinement for second and third offenses.

When a inmate convicted of an offense and sentenced to confinement therefor in a state correctional facility, is received therein, if he or she was before convicted in the United States of a crime punishable by imprisonment in a state correctional facility, and the record of his or her conviction does not show that he or she has been sentenced under section eighteen or nineteen, article eleven, chapter sixty-one of this code, the warden of a state correctional facility may give information thereof, to the circuit court of the county in which the facility is located, whether it be alleged or not in the indictment on which he or she was convicted that he or she had before been previously so convicted. If such information is given, the court shall cause the inmate to be brought before it, and upon an information filed, setting forth the several records of conviction, and alleging the identity of the inmate with the person named in each, shall require the inmate named to say whether he or she is the same person or not. If he or she say he or she is not, or remain silent, his or her plea, or the fact of his or her silence, shall be entered of record, and a jury shall be impaneled to inquire whether the inmate is the same person mentioned in the several records. If the jury find that he or she is not the same person, he or she shall be remanded to a state correctional facility; but if they find that he or she is the same person, or if he or she acknowledge in open court, after being duly cautioned, that he or she is the same person, the court shall sentence him or her to such further confinement as is prescribed by article eleven, chapter sixty-one of this code, on a second or third conviction, as the case may be.