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Apprendi v. New Jersey

By Senior Attorney J. Phillip Griffin

It is difficult to predict what issues will become important as the courts deal with new kinds of cases. Some legislatures have passed laws to limit the disparities in sentencing that appear when individual judges have a lot of discretion in setting sentences. Some statutes, such as the federal sentencing guidelines, list various factors and prescribe a sentence based upon which of those factors are present in a given case. In other kinds of statutes, the legislature has decided that it wants punish certain crimes more severely, such as crimes committed with a racial motive or committed with a firearm. Both kinds of statutes can require the judge to base the sentence on factors shown to be present by a preponderance of the evidence. Over the last few Supreme Court terms, sentences based upon factors found by the judge have come into question.

Jones v. United States, 526 U.S. 227 (1999), involved a provision of the federal car-jacking statute that increased the maximum sentence from 15 to 25 years if a serious injury resulted from the crime. When the defendant was arraigned, he was advised that the maximum sentence was 15 years. After the jury found him guilty, the judge found that his victim was seriously injured and sentenced him to 25 years. The Supreme Court held that this procedure violated the Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights to notice of the charges and to trial by jury. The Court held that every fact that increases a sentence for a crime, other than prior convictions, must be treated as an element of the crime, alleged in the indictment, and proven to the jury beyond a reasonable doubt.

In the following term, a state prosecution raised the same issues. In Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466 (2000), the defendant had fired shots into a house and was charged with possession of a firearm for an unlawful purpose. The charged crime had a maximum sentence of ten years. After the entry of a guilty plea, the prosecution asked for an enhancement of the sentence based upon a provision of New Jersey law that increases the maximum sentence if a crime is motivated by racism. The trial court found that the defendant shot at the house to frighten his neighbors because of their race, and imposed an enhanced sentence. The Supreme Court held that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment imposed upon the states the same requirements of notice and jury trial that applied to the federal government. Those requirements were announced in Jones. Since the racial motive for the crime was not proven to a jury and not admitted in the guilty plea, it could not serve as a basis for an enhanced sentence.

Since the decisions in Jones and Apprendi, various provisions of the federal sentencing guidelines have come under attack. In particular, the quantity of drugs involved in an offense, if in dispute, cannot be the basis for an enhanced sentence unless it was alleged in the indictment and found beyond a reasonable doubt by the jury. United States v. Cotton, 535 U.S. 625 (2002).

However, the implications for state laws are more complicated, partly because the Supreme Court has never held that state criminal prosecutions require an indictment at all. Hurtado v. California, 110 U.S. 516 (1884) (the Supreme Court refused to require that states initiate criminal prosecution by grand jury indictment). For example, some crimes in North Carolina are charged in "short form" indictments, which do not include all the elements of the crime. The North Carolina courts have refused to apply Apprendi's requirement that the elements of the crime must be included in the indictment. See State v. Braxton , 352 N.C. 158, 174-175 (2001) upholding the short-form murder indictment); State v. Love, ___ N.C. App. ___ (September 3, 2002) (upholding the short-form sexual offense indictment).

Thus far, the federal courts have not applied Apprendi to invalidate a conviction based upon a "short form" indictment, partly based upon the authority of Hurtado.

However, the North Carolina Supreme Court has applied the rule in Apprendi to require indictment and jury conviction before the application of the firearm enhancement penalty. N.C. Gen. Stat. §15A-1340.16A purports to authorize a sentencing judge to add 60 months to the minimum term of imprisonment if the defendant is convicted of a Class A, B1, B2, C, D, or E felony in which he used a firearm. In State v. Lucas, 353 N.C. 568, 598, the court ruled that "in every instance where the state seeks an enhanced sentence pursuant to N.C. Gen. Stat. §15A-1340.16A, it must allege the statutory factors supporting the enhancement in the indictment, which may be the same indictment that charges the underlying offense, and submit those factors to the jury." The North Carolina court stated it would limit the effect of its ruling to cases, which were not yet final at the time (June 20, 2001). Of course, the ruling in Apprendi would be applicable to the unconstitutional application of the firearm enhancement from its own date, a year earlier.

Obviously, the federal and state courts both have a long way to go before the full implications of the decisions in Jones, Apprendi, and Lucas are spelled out. This report provides only general information. If you have a question about the validity of your own sentence, let us know and we can provide an individual application of these principles to your case.