Opinion ID: 1791862
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Fundamental Significance of Apprendi and Ring

Text: For starters, the majority's rejection of the significance of the Apprendi and Ring decisions directly conflicts with the clear and unambiguous characterization of their significance in the United States Supreme Court opinion in Apprendi itself. Ring, of course, applies Apprendi in the heightened death penalty context by requiring that a jury, not a judge, determine the existence of factual aggravators that may serve as a basis for a death sentence. As to whether its decision was one of fundamental significance, the Apprendi court declared: At stake in this case are constitutional protections of surpassing importance: the proscription of any deprivation of liberty without due process of law, Amdt. 14, and the guarantee that [i]n all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury, Amdt. 6. Taken together, these rights indisputably entitle a criminal defendant to a jury determination that [he] is guilty of every element of the crime with which he is charged, beyond a reasonable doubt. Apprendi, 530 U.S. at 476-77, 120 S.Ct. 2348 (quoting United States v. Gaudin, 515 U.S. 506, 510, 115 S.Ct. 2310, 132 L.Ed.2d 444 (1995)) (emphasis supplied) (footnote omitted). Surely this language resolves any doubt as to the fundamental significance of the Court's decisions. One might logically ask how a decision mandating constitutional protections of surpassing importance could be categorized as anything other than a decision of fundamental significance, especially when they are applied by Ring in the death is different context of death penalty law and its elevated concern for the fairness of the process and strict adherence to constitutional safeguards. Moreover, the Supreme Court's opinion in Apprendi pointedly described New Jersey's statutory scheme that allowed a judge to find the facts necessary to increase a defendant's sentence beyond the statutory maximum as an unacceptable departure from the jury tradition that is an indispensable part of our criminal justice system. Id. at 497, 120 S.Ct. 2348. Tellingly, the principal dissent in Apprendi also recognized its importance as a groundbreaking change in the law. See id. at 524, 120 S.Ct. 2348 (O'Connor, J., dissenting) (referring to Apprendi as a watershed change in constitutional law). Today, that watershed change in constitutional law is brushed off by the majority as a minor procedural convenience even where its application, as noted by Justice Breyer, may quite literally mean the difference between life and death. [19] In fact, the fundamental significance of Apprendi and Ring have recently been emphatically reaffirmed by the United States Supreme Court in its decision in Blakely v. Washington, 542 U.S. 296, 124 S.Ct. 2531, 159 L.Ed.2d 403 (2004). As if the Court's words in Apprendi and Ring were not enough, let us consider the words most recently used by the Court in Blakely assessing the fundamental significance of the Apprendi decision: Our commitment to Apprendi in this context reflects not just respect for longstanding precedent, but the need to give intelligible content to the right of jury trial. That right is no mere procedural formality, but a fundamental reservation of power in our constitutional structure. Just as suffrage ensures the people's ultimate control in the legislative and executive branches, jury trial is meant to ensure their control in the judiciary. See Letter XV by the Federal Farmer (Jan. 18, 1788), reprinted in 2 The Complete Anti-Federalist 315, 320 (H. Storing ed.1981) (describing the jury as secur[ing] to the people at large, their just and rightful control in the judicial department); John Adams, Diary Entry (Feb. 12, 1771), reprinted in 2 Works of John Adams 252, 253 (C. Adams ed. 1850) ([T]he common people, should have as complete a control ... in every judgment of a court of judicature as in the legislature); Letter from Thomas Jefferson to the Abbe Arnoux (July 19, 1789), reprinted in 15 Papers of Thomas Jefferson 282, 283 (J. Boyd ed. 1958) (Were I called upon to decide whether the people had best be omitted in the Legislative or Judiciary department, I would say it is better to leave them out of the Legislative); Jones v. United States, 526 U.S. 227, 244-248, 119 S.Ct. 1215, 143 L.Ed.2d 311 (1999). Apprendi carries out this design by ensuring that the judge's authority to sentence derives wholly from the jury's verdict. Without that restriction, the jury would not exercise the control that the Framers intended. .... Ultimately, our decision cannot turn on whether or to what degree trial by jury impairs the efficiency or fairness of criminal justice. One can certainly argue that both these values would be better served by leaving justice entirely in the hands of professionals; many nations of the world, particularly those following civil-law traditions, take just that course. There is not one shred of doubt, however, about the Framers' paradigm for criminal justice: not the civil-law ideal of administrative perfection, but the common-law ideal of limited state power accomplished by strict division of authority between judge and jury. As Apprendi held, every defendant has the right to insist that the prosecutor prove to a jury all facts legally essential to the punishment. Under the dissenters' alternative, he has no such right. That should be the end of the matter. Blakely, 124 S.Ct. at 2538-39, 2543 (emphasis supplied). Contrary to the Supreme Court's language in Blakely admonishing that Apprendi should not be treated as a mere procedural formality, the majority has done just that in rejecting its fundamental significance. Is it possible that a United States Supreme Court decision upholding the fundamental reservation of power [to the people] in our constitutional structure cannot be one of fundamental significance? Further, Ring's language that [t]he right to trial by jury guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment would be senselessly diminished if it encompassed the factfinding necessary to increase a defendant's sentence by two years, but not the factfinding necessary to put him to death cannot be so casually ignored in our assessment of fundamental significance. Ring, 536 U.S. at 609, 122 S.Ct. 2428. As I have commented in other contexts, the application of Apprendi in Ring is clearly the most significant death penalty decision to come from the United States Supreme Court in the past thirty years.  Ring is clearly the most significant death penalty decision of the United States Supreme Court since the decision in Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 92 S.Ct. 2726, 33 L.Ed.2d 346 (1972), invalidating the death penalty schemes of virtually all states. Bottoson v. Moore, 833 So.2d 693, 703 (Fla.2002) (Anstead, C.J., concurring in result only); see Duest v. State, 855 So.2d 33, 57 (Fla. 2003) (Anstead, C.J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). Under the death is different jurisprudence mandated by the United States Supreme Court, the significance of Apprendi as applied in Ring is heightened, not diminished. In essence, the majority has chosen to ignore the plain meaning of the words fundamental significance as contemplated by Witt, as well as the plain meaning of the actual words used by the United States Supreme Court in its opinions describing the nature and importance of its decisions upholding the right of an American citizen to due process and a trial by jury in Apprendi and Ring. When the Supreme Court's own characterizations of its decisions are considered in their plain meaning, the conclusion that these decisions are of fundamental significance should be a no-brainer, a slam dunk. Instead, the majority has determined these decisions are no big deal rather than of fundamental significance.