Apprendi v. New Jersey

Infobox SCOTUS case
Litigants=Apprendi v. New Jersey
ArgueDate=March 28
ArgueYear=2000
DecideDate=June 26
DecideYear=2000
FullName=Charles C. Apprendi, Jr. v. New Jersey
USVol=530
USPage=466
Citation=120 S. Ct. 2348; 147 L. Ed. 2d 435; 2000 U.S. LEXIS 4304; 68 U.S.L.W. 4576; 2000 Cal. Daily Op. Service 5061; 2000 Daily Journal DAR 6749; 2000 Colo. J. C.A.R. 3722; 13 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. S 457
Prior=Defendant sentenced after plea agreement, Superior Ct. of New Jersey, Law Div., Cumberland Cty., 1995; affirmed, 698 A.2d 1265 (N.J. Super. Ct. App. Div. 1997); affirmed, 731 A.2d 485 (N.J. 1999); cert. granted, 528 U.S. 1018 (1998)
Subsequent=
Holding=The New Jersey Hate Crime Statute was an unconstitutional violation of the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial because it allowed a judge to increase a criminal sentence beyond its statutory maximum based on his own finding of an aggravating factor by the preponderance of the evidence. New Jersey Supreme Court reversed and remanded.
SCOTUS=1994-2005
Majority=Stevens
JoinMajority=Scalia, Souter, Thomas, Ginsburg
Concurrence=Scalia
Concurrence2=Thomas
JoinConcurrence2=Scalia (parts I, II)
Dissent=O'Connor
JoinDissent=Rehnquist, Kennedy, Breyer
Dissent2=Breyer
JoinDissent2=Rehnquist
LawsApplied=U.S. Const. amend. VI;fn|1 N.J. Stat. Ann. § 2C:44-3(e) (New Jersey Hate Crime Statute)

"Apprendi v. New Jersey ", ussc|530|466|2000, was a United States Supreme Court decision. The Court ruled that the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial, incorporated against the states through the Fourteenth Amendment, prohibited judges from enhancing criminal sentences beyond statutory maximums based on facts other than those decided by the jury beyond a reasonable doubt. The decision has been a cornerstone in the modern resurgence in jury trial rights. As Justice Scalia noted in his concurring opinion, the jury-trial right "has never been efficient; but it has always been free."

The "Apprendi" decision was subsequently cited as precedent by the court in its consideration of "Ring v. Arizona", which struck down Arizona's judge-only method of imposing the death penalty, and also in "Blakely v. Washington", which ruled that mandatory state sentencing guidelines are the statutory maximum for purposes of applying the "Apprendi" rule.

Background of the case

In the early morning hours of December 22, 1994, Charles Apprendi, Jr., fired several .22-caliber bullets into the home of an African-American family that had recently moved into his neighborhood. He was arrested an hour later. During questioning by police, he admitted that he shot at the house because its occupants were "black in color" and for that reason he did not "want them in the neighborhood."

Later, Apprendi pleaded guilty to weapons possession charges. Each of these counts carried a sentence of between 5 and 10 years in prison. As part of the plea bargain, the prosecution reserved the right to seek an enhanced sentence on the basis that the crime was committed with a biased purpose. Such an enhancement would have doubled the sentence otherwise imposed for each of the crimes. Apprendi, in turn, reserved the right to challenge the bias crime enhancement violated the federal Constitution.

The trial judge accepted Apprendi's plea. At a later hearing, he heard testimony from Apprendi himself as well as from psychologists stating that the shooting was not motivated by racial hatred but instead was the result of intoxication. The policeman testified at this hearing that Apprendi's motivation was racial animus. The trial judge found "by a preponderance of the evidence" that Apprendi's crime was motivated by the race of the victims. He sentenced Apprendi to 12 years in prison—2 years above the maximum sentence authorized for the weapons charge apart from the race enhancement.

Apprendi appealed. The Appellate Division of the New Jersey Superior Court affirmed the enhancement on the grounds that it was a "sentencing factor" rather than an "element" of the crime, and therefore not subject to the jury-trial and proof-beyond-a-reasonable-doubt requirements of the Constitution. The New Jersey Supreme Court agreed with this conclusion, and also affirmed Apprendi's sentence. Apprendi's lawyer,Joseph D. O'Neill, asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review his case, and it agreed to do so.

Majority Opinion

"Apprendi" shifted the landscape with regard to the findings that comprise a criminal sentence. "Other than the fact of a prior conviction, any fact that increases the penalty for a crime beyond the prescribed statutory maximum must be submitted to a jury and proved beyond a reasonable doubt." In this case, the hate-crime enhancement was determined by a judge, sitting alone, and subjected to a lower standard of proof — a preponderance of the evidence, instead of beyond a reasonable doubt. Because of the enhancement, the judge imposed a 12-year sentence, which was 2 years greater than the 10-year sentence otherwise authorized by the findings at the plea hearing. Under the rule the Court formulated, Apprendi's case had to be sent back to the New Jersey courts.

Historical Basis for the "Apprendi" Rule

Oliver Wendell Holmes observed, "The law threatens certain pains if you do certain things, intending thereby to give you a new motive for not doing them. If you persist in doing them, it has to inflict the pains in order that its threats may continue to be believed." Here, New Jersey threatened punishment for infractions against its firearms laws, and additional punishment for violations of its hate-crimes laws. Due process procedural safeguards should apply equally to both of these punishments.

Under the Constitution, due process gives criminal defendants two interdependent procedural safeguards with respect to the manner in which the sentence is determined. The first of these is the jury trial, a "guard against a spirit of oppression and tyranny on the part of the rulers" and "the great bulwark of our civil and political liberties," whereby "the truth of every accusation, whether preferred in the shape of indictment, information, or appeal, should afterwards be confirmed by the unanimous suffrage of twelve of the defendant's equals and neighbors." The second is proof beyond a reasonable doubt, the historical "measure of persuasion by which the prosecution must convince the trier of all the essential elements of guilt." There was historically no distinction between an "element" of a crime and a "sentencing factor" because the trial judge had very little discretion at sentencing, because most crimes had a specific sentence attached to them.

Justice Thomas explained how the original understanding of the jury-trial requirement supported the Court's ruling. He also argued that the jury-trial requirement applied to both mandatory minimum sentences and the findings of prior convictions used to enhance sentences. To make this argument, Justice Thomas had to repudiate his prior support for the prior conviction exception crafted in "Almendarez-Torres v. United States", ussc|523|224|1998. "What matters is the way by which a fact enters into the sentence." Even though a prior conviction may be valid because it entailed its own jury trial, the fact that that prior conviction was being used to enhance a new sentence meant that that fact must be submitted to a jury again.

Before the death of William Rehnquist and the retirement of Sandra Day O'Connor, this view commanded a majority of the Court. Many are hopeful that if the Roberts Court were directly faced with the question, it might extend "Apprendi"'s jury-trial requirement to the fact of a prior conviction as well.

Twentieth Century Developments

In 1949's "Williams v. New York", the Court affirmed that a sentencing judge has discretion to impose any sentence authorized by statute in an individual case. This statement accommodated a shift in the way legislatures had set punishments between the 18th and 20th centuries — a shift away from fixed punishments and toward broader and broader ranges of punishment. This was not to say that "trial practices cannot change in the course of centuries and still remain true to the principles that emerged from the Framers' fears that the jury right could be lost not only by gross denial, but by erosion." Nevertheless, practice should at least adhere to basic principles, even as that practice evolves of the course of time.

With the decision in "In re Winship" in 1970, the Court expressly said for the first time that due process demands from the government proof beyond a reasonable doubt of every element of a crime. Thus, the Court held that a state court not force a defendant to prove he did not act with malice aforethought in order to avoid a murder conviction, as in "Mullaney v. Wilbur", ussc|421|684|1975. Criminal law "is concerned not only with guilt or innocence in the abstract, but also with the degree of criminal culpability assessed" in the defendant. Thus, redefining the elements of murder to make the level of intent required bear on punishment was not an appropriate method for avoiding the reasonable-doubt requirement of the Constitution.

It was not until 1986, in "McMillan v. Pennsylvania", ussc|477|79|1986, that the Court first coined the term "sentencing factor." A "sentencing factor" is a fact not found by a jury that nevertheless affected the sentence imposed by a judge. In "McMillan", a state statute required a 5-year minimum sentence for anyone who visibly possessed a firearm during certain crimes. Imposing a mandatory minimum sentence based on this factual finding did not violate the reasonable-doubt requirement because it merely limited the discretion of the sentencing court rather than increased the maximum sentence available to the judge by virtue of the finding.

entencing Enhancements Are Subject to the Reasonable-Doubt Requirement

The hate-crime sentencing enhancement at issue in this case was a ratchet — it exposed Apprendi to greater punishment by virtue of an additional fact which was not a component of the firearms violation that exposed him to any criminal liability at all. Thus, in order to apply the historical procedural safeguards in the novel context of sentencing enhancements, the Court had to extend these protections to those new enhancements.

Because the hate-crime enhancement increased the punishment available to the sentencing judge instead of raising the floor on the sentencing range as a mandatory minimum would, the Court would not allow the hate-crime enhancement to escape the constitutional protections. The reason for criminal activity requires an inquiry into the defendant's motive, a traditional arena of criminal examination. Punishing a person for this specific bad intent has historically been the province of the criminal law, and historically required certain procedural safeguards. Merely labelling the hate-crime enhancement as a "sentencing factor" could not allow New Jersey to escape constitutional requirements.

Preserving the Recidivism Exception

Two years before "Apprendi", the Court decided "Almendarez-Torres v. United States", ussc|523|224|1998, in which the Court held that a federal statute authorizing increased punishment for illegally reentering the United States after deportation pursuant to a conviction for certain crimes was constitutional despite a then-emerging view (later solidified in "Apprendi") that facts that increased punishment must be proved to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. In "Apprendi", the Court acknowledged that "Almendarez-Torres" might conflict with the blanket rule it was adopting in that case. However, the Court allowed sentencing enhancements for prior convictions to stand because those prior convictions had already been subject to the jury-trial and reasonable-doubt requirements.

Dissenting Opinions

Justice O'Connor began with the argument that rather than allowing the Constitution to dictate what elements of crimes are, the Court usually deferred to the legislature's definition of the elements that constitute a crime. She also disputed that the historical evidence cited by the majority dictated the result it reached. The fact that common-law judges may have had little discretion in imposing sentence had little bearing for her on modern sentencing schemes.

Furthermore, Justice O'Connor disputed that the Court's modern cases dictated the result. Although the Court in "Mullaney v. Wilbur", ussc|421|684|1975, may have ruled that the jury-trial and reasonable-doubt requirements applied to the facts that dictated the degree of homicide crime the defendant had committed, and thus the level of punishment to which he was subject, two years later, in "Patterson v. New York", ussc|432|197|1977, the Court ruled that a state could place on defendants the burden of proving affirmative defenses, such as extreme emotional disturbance. "Patterson", for Justice O'Connor, repudiated the general principle that facts bearing on the degree of punishment must be proved to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. Also, "McMillan v. Pennsylvania", ussc|477|79|1986, was not relevant to the Court's rule because "McMillan" involved a mandatory "minimum" punishment, rather than a maximum sentence.

Finally, Justice O'Connor warned that the Court's decision did not square with "Walton v. Arizona", ussc|479|639|1990, in which the Court had ruled that the jury-trial requirement expressly did "not" apply to the aggravating factors required under Arizona law to impose a death sentence. As Justice O'Connor observed, a judge in Arizona could not impose a death sentence without a finding that one of the aggravating factors applied. Under the rule the majority adopted, that finding would have to be made by a jury, yet O'Connor found the majority's attempt to distinguish Arizona's death penalty to be "baffling." Two years later, in "Ring v. Arizona", ussc|536|584|2002, Justice O'Connor's view about Arizona's death penalty scheme would prevail. O'Connor also predicted that the "Apprendi" decision would give rise to serious constitutional doubt in the federal sentencing scheme. In 2005's "United States v. Booker", ussc|543|220|2005, this prediction also came to pass.

Justice Breyer complained that the "real world of criminal justice" would not be able to meet the "ideal" of submitting to juries facts that subject criminal defendants to increased punishments. Fixing certain punishments for all defendants convicted of the same offense would ignore specific harms committed by different defendants as well as certain characteristics of individual defendants. "There are, to put it simply, far too many relevant sentencing factors to permit submission of all (or even many) of them to a jury." Because this was a premise upon which the Federal Sentencing Guidelines rested, Justice Breyer dissented from the majority's opinion. Yet his opinion for the majority in "United States v. Booker", in which he crafted the remedy of severance and excision of the mandatory nature of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, meant that Breyer ultimately prevailed in the sentencing battle, even if he had momentarily lost the constitutional war in "Apprendi".

ee also

* List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 530

External links

*caselaw source
case="Apprendi v. New Jersey", 530 U.S. 466 (2000)
enfacto=http://www.enfacto.com/case/U.S./530/466/
findlaw=http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?navby=case&court=US&vol=530&invol=466
other_source1=LII
other_url1=http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/99-478.ZS.html
* [http://www.oyez.org/oyez/resource/case/1218/ OYEZ Project, Northwestern University]
* [http://www.slate.com/id/52653/entry/78164/ Slate] 's Dahlia Lithwick's take on the oral argument
* [http://www.usdoj.gov/osg/briefs/1999/3mer/1ami/99-0478.mer.ami.pdf Amicus brief of the Solicitor General]