Opinion ID: 1043936
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Apprendi, Its Progeny, and Their Effect

Text: Beginning in 2000, the United States Supreme Court released a series of opinions that fundamentally altered the sentencing landscape at both the federal and state levels.23 See State v. Gomez, 163 S.W.3d 632, 662 (Tenn. 2005) (“Gomez I”) (Anderson, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (observing that the United States Supreme Court’s sentencing 23 In Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466 (2000), the Court noted that the answer to the issue raised in that case “was foreshadowed by . . . Jones v. United States, 526 U.S. 227 (1999),” in which the Court, interpreting federal law, “noted that ‘under the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment and the notice and jury trial guarantees of the Sixth Amendment, any fact (other than prior conviction) that increases the maximum penalty for a crime must be charged in an indictment, submitted to a jury, and proven beyond a reasonable doubt.’” Apprendi, 530 U.S. at 476 (quoting Jones, 526 U.S. at 243 n.6). -12- decisions represented major changes); Pfaff, 93 Marq. L. Rev. at 683 (describing the Court’s cases as dismantling the states’ efforts to effectuate sentencing reform). In Apprendi, 530 U.S. at 469, the defendant pled guilty to two counts of possession of a firearm under New Jersey law, which provided for a sentence of between five and ten years. Id. at 468. A separate statute authorized trial judges to enhance the sentence if, by a preponderance of the evidence, the defendant was found to have “‘acted with a purpose to intimidate an individual or group of individuals because of race, color, gender, handicap, religion, sexual orientation or ethnicity.’” Id. at 469 (quoting N.J. Stat. Ann. § 2C:44-3(e) (West Supp. 2000)). Pursuant to this statute, the trial judge increased the defendant’s sentence on one count to twelve years. Apprendi, 530 U.S. at 471. The Supreme Court held that “[o]ther than the fact of a prior conviction,” the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires that a jury find beyond a reasonable doubt “any fact that increases the penalty for a crime beyond the prescribed statutory maximum.” Id. at 490. Accordingly, the statute authorizing the trial judge to enhance the sentence was found to be unconstitutional, as it represented “an unacceptable departure from the jury tradition that is an indispensable part of our criminal