Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 783.0

524US2

Unit: $U98

[09-06-00 19:40:38] PAGES PGT: OPIN

738

MONGE v. CALIFORNIA

Scalia, J., dissenting

appropriate. That sentencer often considers new factual is-
sues and additional evidence under much less demanding
proof requirements than apply at the conviction stage. The
fundamental distinction between facts that are elements
of a criminal offense and facts that go only to the sentence
provides the foundation for our entire double jeopardy juris-
prudence—including the “same elements” test for determin-
ing whether two “offence[s]” are “the same,” see Block-
burger v. United States, 284 U. S. 299 (1932), and the rule (at
issue here) that the Clause protects an expectation of ﬁnality
with respect to offences but not sentences. The same dis-
tinction also delimits the boundaries of other important con-
stitutional rights, like the Sixth Amendment right to trial by
jury and the right to proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

I do not believe that that distinction is (as the Court seems
to assume) simply a matter of the label afﬁxed to each fact
by the legislature. Suppose that a State repealed all of the
violent crimes in its criminal code and replaced them with
only one offense, “knowingly causing injury to another,”
bearing a penalty of 30 days in prison, but subject to a series
of “sentencing enhancements” authorizing additional punish-
ment up to life imprisonment or death on the basis of various
levels of mens rea, severity of injury, and other surrounding
circumstances. Could the State then grant the defendant
a jury trial, with requirement of proof beyond a reason-
able doubt, solely on the question whether he “knowingly
cause[d] injury to another,” but leave it for the judge to de-
termine by a preponderance of the evidence whether the de-
fendant acted intentionally or accidentally, whether he used
a deadly weapon, and whether the victim ultimately died
from the injury the defendant inﬂicted?
If the protections
extended to criminal defendants by the Bill of Rights can be
so easily circumvented, most of them would be, to borrow a
phrase from Justice Field, “vain and idle enactment[s], which
accomplished nothing, and most unnecessarily excited Con-