Opinion ID: 48706
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Application of Sixth Amendment Rights at Sentencing

Text: 39 Since Williams was decided, certain Sixth Amendment rights have been applied incrementally to the sentencing process, capital and noncapital. Now criminal defendants have a right to counsel throughout sentencing. 17 Likewise, they have a right to a jury finding, beyond a reasonable doubt, of any facts necessary to expose a defendant to a higher maximum penalty, including death, regardless of whether those facts are labeled sentencing factors rather than elements of the offense. 18 40 When it comes to the ultimate selection of an appropriate punishment out of a range of available options, however, there is no constitutional right to jury sentencing in a noncapital or capital case. 19 And with regard to the confrontation right, caselaw definitively maintains the Williams principle in the noncapital context and establishes that the right does not apply at sentencing. In particular, the Confrontation Clause does not operate to bar the introduction of testimonial hearsay at noncapital sentencing. 20 41 Here we are asked to decide whether the confrontation right applies with full force throughout capital sentencing, despite the fact that it is nonexistent at ordinary sentencing. Given that, as shown above, no other Sixth Amendment right has been applied ( vel non ) differently at capital sentencing from how it is applied at noncapital sentencing, there is little reason to establish divergent rules with regard to the confrontation right when the sentencing authority is selecting a sentence from within an authorized range. 42 On the basis of the Supreme Court's consistent treatment of Sixth Amendment rights across capital and noncapital cases alone, we find unpersuasive the dissent's textual argument for why the Confrontation Clause should extend through the entirety of the capital sentencing process, in light of the fact that the jury right extends only as far as the eligibility determination. The dissent contends that 43 [t]he Jury Clause has a unique second limitation that does not apply to the Right to Counsel or the Confrontation Clause: only a jury trial is required. A jury is only required at trial, whereas both the Right to Counsel and the Confrontation Clause apply more broadly to the whole criminal prosecution, and thus to sentencing. 44 (Internal quotations and citations omitted.) This textual argument proves too much, for it would apply equally at noncapital sentencing, where it has already been established that the right of confrontation is nonexistent. 21 45 The dissent's argument in favor of the application of the Confrontation Clause throughout capital sentencing based on the interplay of the right to counsel and the right of confrontation falters on similar grounds. The dissent states that [t]he Sixth Amendment extends the rights both to counsel and to confrontation in `all criminal prosecutions,' suggesting that where one right applies, the other does too. The dissent further asserts that [r]equiring confrontation in the FDPA's trial-like sentencing regime is particularly appropriate given the interdependence of adversarial rights. . . . [A] meaningful Right to Counsel at capital sentencing depends on confrontation rights. But if, as the dissent suggests, the right to counsel and the right of confrontation are adversarial tools that move in lock step, that again begs the question: Why is the confrontation right admittedly nonexistent at noncapital sentencing, even though the right to counsel plainly applies throughout such proceedings? 46 To address this dilemma, the dissent emphasizes that capital sentencing is more adversarial than is noncapital sentencing: The Confrontation Clause should apply fully because FDPA sentencing, unlike noncapital sentencing, involves a trial-like adversarial proceeding. For this proposition the dissent relies on Bullington v. Missouri, 451 U.S. 430, 438-39 & n. 10, 101 S.Ct. 1852, 68 L.Ed.2d 270 (1981), by stating that [t]he Supreme Court applies certain `trial rights' to adversarial sentencing hearings that bear the `hallmarks of the trial on guilt or innocence.' 47 Bullington, however, is a Fifth Amendment double jeopardy case, and the Court in Spaziano stated as follows: 48 The fact that a capital sentencing is like a trial in the respects significant to the Double Jeopardy Clause . . . does not mean that it is like a trial in respects significant to the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of a jury trial. The Court's concern in Bullington was with the risk that the State, with all its resources, would wear a defendant down, thereby leading to an erroneously imposed death penalty. There is no similar danger involved in denying a defendant a jury trial on the sentencing issue of life or death. The sentencer, whether judge or jury, has a constitutional obligation to evaluate the unique circumstances of the individual defendant and the sentencer's decision for life is final. More important, despite its unique aspects, a capital sentencing proceeding involves the same fundamental issue involved in any other sentencing proceeding—a determination of the appropriate punishment to be imposed on an individual. . . . The Sixth Amendment never has been thought to guarantee a right to a jury determination of that issue. 49 Spaziano, 468 U.S. at 459, 104 S.Ct. 3154 (emphasis added) (internal citations omitted). The Court's analysis indicates that despite the unique aspects of a capital sentencing proceeding, it is not, with respect to the ultimate issue to be decided (the selection of an appropriate punishment), any more trial-like than is ordinary sentencing, where the Confrontation Clause has been held inapplicable. 22 50 Further to justify its proposed anomalous divergent treatment of capital and noncapital sentencing with regard to the Confrontation Clause, the dissent also relies on the history of capital murder trials, stating that [a]t the time the Confrontation Clause was written, a capital trial was a single, unified proceeding at which both guilt and sentence were decided. The Framers knew nothing of capital sentencing proceedings separate from trial. If one was convicted of a capital felony, one was automatically sentenced to death. According to the dissent, the trial became a  de facto sentencing proceeding in which the jury would render a verdict in favor of a lesser crime if it did not think the death penalty was warranted. The dissent asserts that 51 [t]he critical point is this: because these de facto capital sentencing proceedings took the form of full criminal trials, the defendant possessed full trial rights of confrontation. However, the notion that capital sentencing might be conducted outside of an adversarial trial is strictly a post-constitutional phenomenon. 52 The dissent goes on to state that at the time of the Founding, cases suggest that judges conducted noncapital sentencing in informal proceedings featuring testimonial hearsay. Therefore, according to the dissent, [h]istory supports constraining confrontation rights in noncapital sentencing, but capital sentencing has a different history that suggests the Confrontation Clause should apply. 53 This logic is flawed. The Framers did not know of an institution analogous to our capital sentencing procedure, because there was no mechanism in the trials that operated as so-called  de facto sentencing proceedings for the exercise of discretion even after a jury determined that a defendant was eligible for the death penalty by convicting him of a capital felony. A sentencing authority's ability to select a lesser punishment in a capital case in spite of death-eligibility is indeed a post-constitutional phenomenon, and nothing in the history related by the dissent explains why the presumption should not be as follows: Now that capital sentencing includes such discretion, the exercise of it should be treated in the same manner in which the Framers understood discretionary sentencing in the noncapital context to be treated with respect to the use of testimonial hearsay. 54 Neither the text of the Sixth Amendment nor the history of murder trials supports the extension of the Confrontation Clause to testimony relevant only to penalty selection in a capital case. Furthermore, the manner in which the Supreme Court has proceeded in applying ( vel non ) Sixth Amendment rights during sentencing proceedings suggests there is no distinction between capital and ordinary sentencing for Sixth Amendment purposes, and accordingly the Court provides no indication that the reasoning of Williams has been abandoned in the capital context.