US Supreme Court to decide whether Apprendi applies to criminal fines

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By Pat Murphy
Dolan Newswires

The U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether criminal fines are subject to the constitutional requirement that a jury decide sentencing factors that increase a penalty beyond the prescribed statutory maximum.

The Court will review a 1st Circuit decision holding that Apprendi v. New Jersey (530 U.S. 466) does not apply to the imposition of criminal fines.

The 1st Circuit case involved the prosecution of a Texas-based energy company for the release through theft and vandalism of 140 pounds of mercury that had been stored at a Rhode Island facility. A jury found the defendant guilty of storing hazardous waste without a permit in violation the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. The trial judge imposed a $6 million fine and a $12 million “community service obligation.”

The defendant argued that the fines violated Apprendi, which requires that “any fact” other than that of a prior conviction “that increases the penalty for a crime beyond the prescribed statutory maximum must be submitted to a jury, and proved beyond a reasonable doubt.”

According to the defendant, without jury fact-finding, the Sixth Amendment prohibited a fine greater than the statutory maximum $50,000 for a one-day violation.

But the 1st Circuit relied on the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Oregon v. Ice (129 S. Ct. 711) to hold that Apprendi does not apply to criminal fines. In Ice, the Court upheld a state sentencing regime that allowed judges to find facts justifying the imposition of consecutive, rather than concurrent, sentences of incarceration.

In this case, the 1st Circuit explained that “[o]ur holding is based on the Supreme Court’s language in Ice that ‘[i]ntruding Apprendi’s rule into’ decisions such as ‘the imposition of statutorily prescribed fines … surely would cut the rule loose from its moorings.’ To the extent that excluding criminal fines from Apprendi requires a more restrained view of the rule’s scope than did the Court’s previous Apprendi-line decisions, it is the Supreme Court in Ice that has imposed the restraint.”

A decision from the Supreme Court is expected later this term.

Southern Union Company v. U.S., No. 11-94. Certiorari granted:  Nov. 28, 2011. Ruling below: 630 F. 3d 17 (1st Cir. 2010).