Sentencing — right to jury trial

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Sentencing — right to jury trial

The rule of Apprendi applies to the imposition of criminal fines.

The “historical role of the jury at common law,” which informs the “scope of the constitutional jury right,” Ice, 555 U. S., at 170, supports applying Apprendi to criminal fines. To be sure, judges in the colonies and during the founding era had much discretion in determining whether to impose a fine and in what amount. But the exercise of such discretion is fully consistent with Apprendi, which permits courts to impose “judgment within the range prescribed by statute.” 530 U. S., at 481 (emphasis in original). The more salient question is what role the jury played in prosecutions for offenses that pegged the amount of a fine to the determination of specified facts. A review of both state and federal decisions discloses that the predominant practice was for such facts to be alleged in the indictment and proved to the jury. The rule that juries must determine facts that set a fine’s maximum amount is an application of the “two longstanding tenets of common-law criminal jurisprudence” on which Apprendi is based: first, “the ‘truth of every accusation’ against a defendant ‘should afterwards be confirmed by the unanimous suffrage of twelve of his equals and neighbours.’ ” Blakely, 542 U. S., at 301. And second, “ ‘an accusation which lacks any particular fact which the law makes essential to the punishment is . . . no accusation within the requirements of the common law, and is no accusation in reason.’ ” Ibid. Contrary to the Government’s contentions, neither United States v. Murphy, 16 Pet. 203, nor United States v. Tyler, 7 Cranch 285, overcomes the ample historical evidence that juries routinely found facts that set maximum criminal fines.
630 F. 3d 17, reversed and remanded.

11-94 Southern Union Co. v. U.S.

Sotomayor, J.; Breyer, J., dissenting.

TAGS: SCOTUS Digest, Criminal Digest, Sentencing Digest

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