Opinion ID: 2639277
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Apprendi's Prior Conviction Exception

Text: To understand Apprendi's treatment of the prior conviction exception, we must first consider Almendarez-Torres v. United States, 523 U.S. 224, 140 L. Ed.2d 350, 118 S.Ct. 1219 (1998). There, the Court considered a federal statute that criminalized the return of a deported alien into the country without special permission. The statutory maximum penalty for the crime was 2 years' imprisonment. The same statute provided that if the alien in question was deported after the commission of an aggravated felony, the maximum prison term was 20 years. The issue was whether a 20-year maximum term defined a separate crime, requiring that the existence of the aggravated felony be charged in the indictment and proven to the jury, or simply authorized an enhanced penalty under certain circumstances. In considering the constitutional implications, the Almendarez-Torres Court reasoned that the sentencing factor at issue here recidivismis a traditional, if not the most traditional, basis for a sentencing court's increasing an offender's sentence. 523 U.S. at 243. Further, [c]onsistent with this tradition, the Court said long ago that a State need not allege a defendant's prior conviction in the indictment or information that alleges the elements of an underlying crime, even though the conviction was `necessary to bring the case within the statute.' [Citation omitted.] 523 U.S. at 243. Almendarez-Torres concluded that to hold that the Constitution requires that recidivism be deemed an `element' of petitioner's offense would mark an abrupt departure from a longstanding tradition of treating recidivism as `go[ing] to the punishment only.' [Citation omitted.] 523 U.S. at 244. The conclusion in Almendarez-Torres was later put into context in Jones v. United States, 526 U.S. 227, 143 L. Ed.2d 311, 119 S.Ct. 1215 (1999). Jones considered the federal statute criminalizing carjacking, which provided for a maximum penalty of 15 years' imprisonment, 25 years' imprisonment if serious bodily injury resulted, and up to life imprisonment if death resulted. Jones was charged and convicted of carjacking without mention of serious bodily injury. The sentencing court found by a preponderance of the evidence that the victim sustained serious bodily injury and sentenced Jones to 25 years in prison. Jones concluded that the carjacking statute as written established three separate offenses by its specification of distinct elements, each of which must be charged in the indictment and proven to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. 526 U.S. at 252. The Court distinguished Almendarez-Torres by explaining: Almendarez-Torres ... stands for the proposition that not every fact expanding a penalty range must be stated in a felony indictment, the precise holding being that recidivism increasing the maximum penalty need not be so charged. But the case is not dispositive of the question here, not merely because we are concerned with the Sixth Amendment right to jury trial and not alone the rights to indictment and notice as claimed by Almendarez-Torres, but because the holding last Term rested in substantial part on the tradition of regarding recidivism as a sentencing factor, not as an element to be set out in the indictment. The Court's repeated emphasis on the distinctive significance of recidivism leaves no question that the Court regarded that fact as potentially distinguishable for constitutional purposes from other facts that might extend the range of possible sentencing. [Citations omitted.] One basis for that possible constitutional distinctiveness is not hard to see: unlike virtually any other consideration used to enlarge the possible penalty for an offense, and certainly unlike the factor before us in this case, a prior conviction must itself have been established through procedures satisfying the fair notice, reasonable doubt, and jury trial guarantees. 526 U.S. at 248-49. With this background we turn to Apprendi. The Court in Apprendi was not faced with the issue of whether the defendant's prior convictions could be used to increase his sentence. Rather, Apprendi challenged the use of the trial court's finding that the crime was committed with a biased purpose to enhance his sentence for possession of a firearm. In the shadow of Jones, Apprendi argued that the existence of a biased purpose was an element of the crime that, pursuant to the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, must be proven to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. The Court agreed, concluding that other than the fact of a prior conviction, any fact that increases the penalty for a crime beyond the statutory maximum must be submitted to a jury and proved beyond a reasonable doubt. 530 U.S. at 490. The Apprendi Court acknowledged that in Almendarez-Torres it had approved of the use of the fact of a prior conviction to enhance the defendant's sentence even absent a jury finding as to the existence of the conviction beyond a reasonable doubt. 530 U.S. at 488. The pedigree of the prior conviction exception makes clear that it is rooted in (1) the historical use of recidivism as the most traditional factor supporting the sentencing court's increase of a criminal sentence, rather than functioning as an element of a crime to be set out in an indictment; and (2) the notion that a prior conviction, unlike any other so-called sentencing factor, is cloaked in substantial procedural safeguards. The question becomes whether the absence of the jury trial safeguard in juvenile adjudications is enough to remove it from the narrow exception for prior convictions built into the Apprendi rule.