Sixth Amendment:

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

Since the landmark case Apprendi v. New Jersey,1 decided in 2000, Supreme Court jurisprudence on the applicability of the jury trial right has focused on the constitutionality of sentencing laws that delegate to judges rather than juries the determination of certain facts that affect the range of potential sentences for a crime. Before Apprendi, the Court had upheld such laws on the reasoning that although the jury trial right extended to every element of a criminal offense,2 it did not extend to “sentencing factors.” 3 Apprendi changed this doctrine. The defendant in the case was convicted of a firearms offense punishable by a maximum prison term of ten years.4 Under a separate sentencing-enhancement statute, however, the maximum penalty increased to twenty years after a trial judge determined by a preponderance of the evidence—at a hearing held after the defendant pleaded guilty—that the defendant committed the offense with the purpose of intimidating a group of individuals due to their race.5 The trial court sentenced the defendant to twelve years in prison for the offense, two years above the statutory maximum that would have applied absent the judge-found fact.6

The Supreme Court held that this sentencing procedure violated the Sixth Amendment.7 The Court articulated its essential holding as follows: “[o]ther 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.” 8 The jury trial right serves as a bulwark against unjust loss of liberty at the hands of government tyranny or oppression, the Court reasoned.9 Accordingly it does not comport with the Sixth Amendment to take the determination of facts that can lead to increased punishment away from the jury,10 especially in light of the historic connection between offense and punishment in the Anglo-American legal tradition.11

Footnotes

1

530 U.S. 466 (2000).

2

See United States v. Gaudin, 515 U.S. 506, 510 (1995) (holding that the Fifth and Sixth Amendments together “require criminal convictions to rest upon a jury determination that the defendant is guilty of every element of the crime with which he is charged, beyond a reasonable doubt” ); id. at 511 ( “The Constitution gives a criminal defendant the right to demand that a jury find him guilty of all the elements of the crime with which he is charged; one of the elements in the present case is materiality; respondent therefore had a right to have the jury decide materiality.” ).

3

McMillan v. Pennsylvania, 477 U.S. 79, 85–86, 93 (1986) (upholding against due process and Sixth Amendment challenges a statutory sentencing scheme under which a judge’s factual determination that the defendant “visibly possessed a firearm” during the commission of certain felonies triggered an otherwise inapplicable five-year mandatory minimum sentence) ( “[T]he Pennsylvania Legislature has expressly provided that visible possession of a firearm is not an element of the crimes enumerated in the mandatory sentencing statute, but instead is a sentencing factor that comes into play only after the defendant has been found guilty of one of those crimes beyond a reasonable doubt.” ) (citation omitted), overruled by Alleyne v. United States, 570 U.S. 99, 103 (2013); see also Walton v. Arizona, 497 U.S. 639, 649 (1990) (upholding a statutory scheme that conditioned imposition of the death penalty upon a judge’s finding of certain aggravating factors), overruled by Ring v. Arizona, 536 U.S. 584, 589 (2002).

4

Apprendi, 530 U.S. at 468 (noting that the offense was “possession of a firearm for an unlawful purpose,” punishable by imprisonment for between five and ten years).

5

Id. at 468–69, 471.

6

Id. at 471.

7

Id. at 490.

8

Id. A passage in Jones v. United States, decided the year before, anticipated Apprendi's holding, although the Court decided Jones on statutory grounds and did not make a clear constitutional holding. Jones v. United States, 526 U.S. 227, 243 n.6 (1999) ( “[U]nder the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment and the notice and jury trial guarantees of the Sixth Amendment, any fact (other than prior conviction) that increases the maximum penalty for a crime must be charged in an indictment, submitted to a jury, and proven beyond a reasonable doubt. . . . [O]ur prior cases suggest rather than establish this principle.” ). As for the exception for the fact of a prior conviction, the Court held before Apprendi that judges could constitutionally determine such facts. Almendarez-Torres v. United States, 523 U.S. 224, 247 (1998) ( “[W]e reject petitioner’s constitutional claim that his recidivism must be treated as an element of his offense.” ). The Court has reaffirmed that holding after Apprendi while carefully delimiting its scope. See Mathis v. United States, 136 S. Ct. 2243, 2252 (2016) ( “This Court has held that only a jury, and not a judge, may find facts that increase a maximum penalty, except for the simple fact of a prior conviction. That means a judge cannot go beyond identifying the crime of conviction to explore the manner in which the defendant committed that offense. . . . [The judge] can do no more, consistent with the Sixth Amendment, than determine what crime, with what elements, the defendant was convicted of.” ).

9

Id. at 477.

10

Id. at 484 ( “If a defendant faces punishment beyond that provided by statute when an offense is committed under certain circumstances but not others, it is obvious that both the loss of liberty and the stigma attaching to the offense are heightened; it necessarily follows that the defendant should not—at the moment the State is put to proof of those circumstances—be deprived of protections that have, until that point, unquestionably attached.” ).

11

Id. at 480 ( “Just as the circumstances of the crime and the intent of the defendant at the time of commission were often essential elements to be alleged in the indictment [at common law], so too were the circumstances mandating a particular punishment.” ); id. at 484 (noting “the historic link between verdict and judgment and the consistent limitation on judges’ discretion to operate within the limits of the legal penalties provided [by statute]” ).