|
|
|
|
|
Apprendi V. New Jersey | bgcolor="6699FF" | Apprendi v. New Jersey | align="center" | 100px
Supreme Court of the United States | bgcolor="6699FF" | Argued ???
Decided ??? | | {| align="center" | | valign="top"|Full case name: | valign="top"|Charles C. Apprendi, Jr. v. New Jersey | | valign="top"|Citations: | valign="top"|530 U.S. 466, 120 S. Ct. 2348, 147 L. Ed. 2d 435 | | valign="top"|Prior history: | valign="top"| | | valign="top"|Subsequent history: | valign="top"| | } | | bgcolor="6699FF" | Holding | | | | bgcolor="6699FF" | Court membership | | {| align="center" | | Chief Justice William Rehnquist | | Associate Justices John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Conner, Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, David H. Souter, Clarence Thomas, Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsberg | } | | bgcolor="6699FF" | Case opinions | | {| align="center" | | Majority by: Stevens | | Joined by: Scalia, Souter, Thomas, and Ginsberg | | b>Dissent by: Breyer, O'Conner | | b>Concurrance by: Scalia, Thomas | } | | bgcolor="6699FF" | Laws applied | | . | Apprendi v. New Jersey , 530 U.S. 466 (2000) was a U.S. Supreme Court decision. The Court ruled, 5-4, that the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial, as well as the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process clause, prohibited judges from enhancing criminal sentences beyond statutory maximums based on facts other than those decided by the jury beyond a reasonable doubt. The Apprendi decision was subsequently cited as precedent by the court in its consideration of Ring v. Arizona, which struck down Arizona's method of imposing the death penalty, and also in Blakely v. Washington, which ruled that juries must decide all elements of a crime which would increase the sentence, unless confessed by the defendant. Case background The case involved the trial and sentencing of Charles C. Apprendi, who fired several bullets into the home of an African-American family in Vineland, New Jersey. During his arrest and interrogation, he admitted to being the shooter, and also stated that he didn't want the family in his neighborhood because of their color. He afterwards retracted the latter statement. Apprendi pled guilty to firearms violations, which had a statutory maximum sentence of ten years; but as a result of an evidentiary hearing, a judge found by a "preponderance of the evidence" that Apprendi had violated New Jersey's hate crime law as an aggravating factor to the firearms offenses, and sentenced the defendant to twelve years in prison, a statutorily valid "enhancement" of the defendant's sentence. Apprendi argued on appeal that the aggravating factor that increased his sentence was a question of fact that must be determined "beyond a reasonable doubt" by a jury, and that his sentence was violative of his Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment rights. The state appeals court and New Jersey Supreme Court ruled against Apprendi, and he appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court's opinion Justice Stevens wrote for the five-member majority in an opinion joined by Justices Scalia, Souter, Thomas and Ginsburg. The opinion held that "any fact other than a prior conviction that increases the maximum penalty for a crime" must be determined beyond a reasonable doubt by a jury. Justice Scalia also wrote a concurrence, as did Justice Thomas, whose opinion was joined by Scalia. Dissenting opinions Justice O'Connor wrote a dissent joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist and by Justices Breyer and Kennedy O'Connor's dissent stated that the majority's decision "threatened to cast sentencing . . . into what will likely prove a lengthy period of considerable confusion." Justice Breyer wrote a separate dissent joined by the Chief Justice. External links
|
 |
|
| Copyright 2005-2009 OnPedia.com. All Rights Reserved |
|
|