Encyclopedia of American Civil Liberties

Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466 (2000)

This case is designed to protect the Sixth Amendment right to a "speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury," and the right inherent in the Due Process Clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to have every element of a criminal offense proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Charles Apprendi fired shots into the home of an African-American family and pleaded guilty to a number of state weapons offenses, the most serious punishable by up to ten years in prison. At sentencing, the New Jersey trial judge applied the state's statute providing for enhanced sentences for "hate-crimes." Pursuant to this statute, Mr. Apprendi faced not a ten- but a twenty-year maximum, and was sentenced to twelve years imprisonment. The factual finding that Mr. Apprendi acted with racial animus was made by the judge using a preponderance of evidence standard. Mr. Apprendi objected, and the United States Supreme Court reversed. Justice Stevens, writing for a five-member majority, declared, "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 a dissent representing four Justices, Justice O'Connor found the majority's holding unsupported by history, and argued that it would disadvantage defendants and undermine three decades of sentencing reform. Under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines and state determinate sentencing regimes, judges presently make numerous factual findings that can increase a defendant's sentence for a particular offense, usually by a preponderance of the evidence standard, and generally based upon certain characteristics surrounding the offense (such as whether the offense was committed with a gun) and the offender (such as the extent of his criminal history). The goal of the sentencing reform movement is to ensure equality of sentencing for similarly situated defendants in an efficient manner, and a shift back to pure judicial discretion in sentencing or jury findings of all facts relevant to sentencing would halt this reform. Moreover, she suggested that the majority's holding amounted to a "meaningless and formalistic" rule that legislatures could easily avoid. For example, New Jersey could increase the maximum sentence for weapons offenses from ten- to twenty-years imprisonment, and allow a judge to reduce the penalty to 10 years by finding that the defendant did not act with racial animus. Finally, Justice O'Connor predicted that this "watershed" rule would unleash a "flood of petitions by convicted defendants seeking to invalidate their sentences."

In the years since Apprendi was rendered, only one of Justice O'Connor's predictions has born fruit. Though many state and federal statutes contain facts which boost maximum penalties, prosecutors have adjusted by charging those facts in the indictment and submitting them to the jury. Due to structural democratic constraints, neither Congress nor state legislatures have attempted to avoid Apprendi's holding by raising statutory maximums. Likewise, Apprendi has not threaten completed criminal prosecutions; the vast majority of those sentences have been upheld on appeal via procedural hurdles such as harmless error, bars against successive petitions, and non-retroactivity (See Schriro v. Summerlin, 124 S.Ct. 2519 (2004)).

However, Apprendi's negative impact on sentencing reform has been profound. In Ring v. Arizona, 536 U.S. 584 (2002), six Justices held that because Arizona conditioned eligibility for the death penalty upon the presence of an aggravating fact that was not an element of first degree murder, the Sixth Amendment guaranteed the defendant a right to a jury determination of that fact. This threatens the capital sentencing schemes in nine states. In Blakely v. Washington, the five Justices comprising the majority in Apprendi held that the relevant "statutory maximum" for Mr. Blakely's offense of kidnapping was the 53-month sentence provided for by the Washington state sentencing guidelines, and not the ten-year statutory maximum specified for the offense. Thus, the judge could not impose a 90-month sentence based upon his finding that the defendant acted with "deliberate cruelty." This decision threatens the sentencing schemes in 14 states and the federal system. In United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. ___ (2005), five members of the Court held that the Sixth Amendment as construed by Blakely applies to judicial findings of fact under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, but a different five member majority held that the remedy was not to submit those facts to the jury, but rather to transform the Guidelines from mandatory rules (providing statutory maximum sentences) to advisory guidelines for federal judges.

References and Further Reading

Nancy J. King & Susan R. Klein, "Apre Apprendi," 12 Federal Sentencing Reporter 331 (2000);

Nancy J. King and Susan R. Klein, "Essential Elements," 54 Vanderbilt Law Rev. 1467 (2001);

Nancy J. King & Susan R. Klein, "Apprendi and Plea Bargaining," 54 Stanford Law Rev. 295 (2001);

Andrew M. Levine, "The Confounding Boundaries of 'Apprendi-land': Statutory Minimums and the Federal Sentencing Guidelines," 29 Am. Crim. L. 377 (2002).

Susan R. Klein & Jordan M. Steiker, "The Search for Equality in Criminal Sentencing," 2002 Supreme Court Rev. 223 (2003);

Nancy J. King and Susan R. Klein, "Beyond Blakely," 16 Federal Sentencing Reporter 413 (June 2004);

Frank O. Bowman, III, "Train Wreck? Or Can the Federal Sentencing System be Saved? A Plea for Rapid Reversal of Blakely v. Washington," 41 Am. Crim. Law Rev. 215 (2004);

Steven L. Chaneson, "The Next Era of Sentencing Reform," 54 Emory Law Journal ___ (forthcoming 2005).

Susan R. Klein

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