Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/560/218/concurrence.html
Timestamp: 2018-01-23 15:36:48
Document Index: 523464026

Matched Legal Cases: ['§924', '§924', '§924', '§924', '§924', '§924']

United States v. O’Brien, (Concurrence by Justice Stevens) :: 560 U.S. 218 (2010) :: Justia US Supreme Court Center
Justia › US Law › US Case Law › US Supreme Court › Volume 560 › United States v. O’Brien › Concurrence
Not only was McMillan wrong the day it was decided, but its reasoning has been substantially undermined—if not eviscerated—by the development of our Sixth Amendment jurisprudence in more recent years. We now understand that “ ‘[i]t is unconstitutional [under the Sixth Amendment] for a legislature to remove from the jury the assessment of facts that increase the prescribed range of penalties to which a criminal defendant is exposed.’ ” Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U. S. 466, 490 (2000) (quoting Jones v. United States, 526 U. S. 227, 252–253 (1999) (Stevens, J., concurring)). Harmonizing Apprendi with our existing Sixth Amendment jurisprudence, we explained that “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.” 530 U. S., at 490 (emphasis added). In other words, we narrowed our holding to those facts that effectively raised the ceiling on the offense, but did not then consider whether the logic of our holding applied also to those facts necessary to set the floor of a particular sentence.
As Justice Thomas eloquently explained in his dissent in Harris v. United States, 536 U. S. 545, 572 (2002), the reasoning in our decision in Apprendi applies with equal force in the context of mandatory minimums. There is, quite simply, no reason to distinguish between facts that trigger punishment in excess of the statutory maximum and facts that trigger a mandatory minimum. This case vividly illustrates the point. It is quite plain that there is a world of difference between the 812-year sentence and the 7-year sentence the judge imposed on the defendants in this case and the 30-year sentence mandated by the machinegun finding under 18 U. S. C. §924(c)(1)(B).
Mandatory minimums may have a particularly acute practical effect in this type of statutory scheme which contains an implied statutory maximum of life, see ante, at 10. There is, in this type of case, no ceiling; there is only a floor below which a sentence cannot fall. Furthermore, absent a positive finding on one of §924(c)(1)’s enumerated factors, it is quite clear that no judge would impose a sentence as great as the sentences commanded by the provision at issue in this case. Indeed, it appears that, but for those subject to the 30-year mandatory minimum, no defendant has ever been sentenced to a sentence anywhere near 30 years for a §924(c) offense. See Brief for Respondent O’Brien 46–47, and n. 15.
“By 1990, forty-six states had enacted mandatory sentence enhancement laws, and most states had a wide variety of these provisions.” Lowenthal, Mandatory Sentencing Laws: Undermining the Effectiveness of Determinate Sentencing Reform, 81 Cal. L. Rev. 61, 64–65 (1993) (footnote omitted); see also id., at 69 (“[M]ost of the current mandatory enhancement laws did not appear until the 1970s”); Schulhofer, Rethinking Mandatory Minimums, 28 Wake Forest L. Rev. 199, 200–201 (1993) (discussing history of federal mandatory minimum sentencing regime).
See Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U. S. 466, 485 (2000) (“It was in McMillan . . . that this Court, for the first time, coined the term ‘sentencing factor’ to refer to a fact that was not found by a jury but that could affect the sentence imposed by the judge”).
Commonwealth v. Wright, 508 Pa. 25, 494 A. 2d 354 (1985).
In Winship, the Court “explicitly” held that “the Due Process Clause protects the accused against conviction except upon proof beyond a reasonable doubt of every fact necessary to constitute the crime with which he is charged.” 397 U. S., at 364.
Consistent with the attempt in Harris v. United States, 536 U. S. 545 (2002), to distinguish Apprendi, Justice Kennedy’s fine opinion for the Court today employs some of the same acrobatics to distinguish Harris from the present case. Harris also involved §924(c)(1), though a different subsection; its reading of the mandatory minimum for “brandishing” a firearm contained in 18 U. S. C. §924(c)(1)(A) as a sentencing factor is not so easily distinguished from the nearly identical mandatory minimum for possessing a “machinegun” under §924(c)(1)(B).
“But in Harris, I said that I thought Apprendi does cover mandatory minimums, but I don’t accept Apprendi. Well, at some point I guess I have to accept Apprendi, because it’s the law and has been for some time. So if . . . if that should become an issue about whether mandatory minimums are treated like the maximums for Apprendi purposes, should we reset the case for argument?” Tr. of Oral Arg. 20 (question by Breyer, J.).