Blakely v. Washington

542 U.S. 296

Case Year: 2004

Case Ruling: 5-4, Reversed and Remanded

Opinion Justice: Scalia

FACTS

Ralph Howard Blakely Jr. married his wife, Yolanda, in 1973. He was, as Justice Scalia put it, "evidently a difficult man to live with, having been diagnosed at various times with psychological and personality disorders including paranoid schizophrenia." After Yolanda filed for divorce, in 1998 Blakely kidnapped her from their home in Washington State, binding her with duct tape and forcing her at knifepoint into a wooden box in the bed of his pickup truck. He tried to convince her to drop the divorce suit.

When the couple's thirteen-year-old son, Ralphy, came home from school, Blakely ordered him to follow in another car, threatening to shoot Yolanda with a shotgun if Ralphy did not comply. Ralphy escaped and sought help, but Blakely drove on with Yolanda to a friend's house in Montana. He was finally arrested after the friend called the police.

The state of Washington charged Blakely with first-degree kidnapping, but, as a result of a plea bargain, reduced the charge to second-degree kidnapping involving domestic violence and the use of a firearm. Blakely pled guilty, admitting the elements of second-degree kidnapping and the domestic-violence and firearm allegations but no other relevant facts.

The case then proceeded to sentencing. In Washington State, second-degree kidnapping is a class B felony, which, under state law, carries with it a maximum prison term of ten years. Other provisions of state law, though, further limit the range of sentences a judge may impose; for example, for Blakely's offense, Washington's Sentencing Reform Act specifies a "standard range" of forty-nine to fifty-three months. A judge may impose a sentence above the standard range if he or she finds "substantial and compelling reasons justifying an exceptional sentence." The act lists aggravating factors that justify such a departure, which are illustrative rather than exhaustive. Nevertheless, "[a] reason offered to justify an exceptional sentence can be considered only if it takes into account factors other than those which are used in computing the standard range sentence for the offense." When a judge imposes an exceptional sentence, that individual must set forth findings of fact and conclusions of law supporting it. A reviewing court will reverse the sentence if it finds that "under a clearly erroneous standard there is insufficient evidence in the record to support the reasons for imposing an exceptional sentence."

Under the plea agreement, the state recommended a sentence within the standard range of forty-nine to fifty-three months. After hearing Yolanda's description of the kidnapping, however, the judge rejected the state's recommendation and imposed an exceptional sentence of ninety months--thirty-seven months beyond the standard maximum. He justified the sentence on the ground that Blakely had acted with "deliberate cruelty," a statutorily enumerated ground for departure in domestic-violence cases.

When Blakely objected, the judge conducted a three-day bench hearing. After hearing testimony from Blakely, Yolanda, Ralphy, a police officer, and medical experts, the judge concluded:

 

"The defendant's motivation to commit kidnapping was complex, contributed to by his mental condition and personality disorders, the pressures of the divorce litigation, the impending trust litigation trial and anger over his troubled interpersonal relationships with his spouse and children. While he misguidedly intended to forcefully reunite his family, his attempt to do so was subservient to his desire to terminate lawsuits and modify title ownerships to his benefit.

"The defendant's methods were more homogeneous than his motive. He used stealth and surprise, and took advantage of the victim's isolation. He immediately employed physical violence, restrained the victim with tape, and threatened her with injury and death to herself and others. He immediately coerced the victim into providing information by the threatening application of a knife. He violated a subsisting restraining order."

 

Accordingly, the judge adhered to his initial determination of deliberate cruelty.

Blakely appealed, asserting that this sentencing procedure deprived him of his federal constitutional right to have a jury determine beyond a reasonable doubt all facts legally essential to his sentence. The state court of appeals affirmed and the Washington Supreme Court denied discretionary review.

 

JUSTICE SCALIA DELIVERED THE OPINION OF THE COURT.

Petitioner Ralph Howard Blakely, Jr., pleaded guilty to the kidnapping of his estranged wife. The facts admitted in his plea, standing alone, supported a maximum sentence of 53 months. Pursuant to state law, the court imposed an "exceptional" sentence of 90 months after making a judicial determination that he had acted with "deliberate cruelty." We consider whether this violated petitioner's Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury....

This case requires us to apply the rule we expressed in Apprendi v. New Jersey (2000): "Other than the fact of a prior conviction, 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." This rule reflects two longstanding tenets of common-law criminal jurisprudence: that the "truth of every accusation" against a defendant "should afterwards be confirmed by the unanimous suffrage of twelve of his equals and neighbours," and that "an accusation which lacks any particular fact which the law makes essential to the punishment is... no accusation within the requirements of the common law, and it is no accusation in reason." These principles have been acknowledged by courts and treatises since the earliest days of graduated sentencing; we compiled the relevant authorities in Apprendi .

Apprendi involved a New Jersey hate-crime statute that authorized a 20-year sentence, despite the usual 10-year maximum, if the judge found the crime to have been committed "'with a purpose to intimidate... because of race, color, gender, handicap, religion, sexual orientation or ethnicity.'" In Ring v. Arizona (2002), we applied Apprendi to an Arizona law that authorized the death penalty if the judge found one of ten aggravating factors. In each case, we concluded that the defendant's constitutional rights had been violated because the judge had imposed a sentence greater than the maximum he could have imposed under state law without the challenged factual finding.

In this case, petitioner was sentenced to more than three years above the 53-month statutory maximum of the standard range because he had acted with "deliberate cruelty." The facts supporting that finding were neither admitted by petitioner nor found by a jury. The State nevertheless contends that there was no Apprendi violation because the relevant "statutory maximum" is not 53 months, but the 10-year maximum for class B felonies. It observes that no exceptional sentence may exceed that limit. Our precedents make clear, however, that the "statutory maximum" for Apprendi purposes is the maximum sentence a judge may impose solely on the basis of the facts reflected in the jury verdict or admitted by the defendant. In other words, the relevant "statutory maximum" is not the maximum sentence a judge may impose after finding additional facts, but the maximum he may impose without any additional findings. When a judge inflicts punishment that the jury's verdict alone does not allow, the jury has not found all the facts "which the law makes essential to the punishment," and the judge exceeds his proper authority.

The judge in this case could not have imposed the exceptional 90-month sentence solely on the basis of the facts admitted in the guilty plea. Those facts alone were insufficient because, as the Washington Supreme Court has explained, "[a] reason offered to justify an exceptional sentence can be considered only if it takes into account factors other than those which are used in computing the standard range sentence for the offense," which in this case included the elements of second-degree kidnapping and the use of a firearm. Had the judge imposed the 90-month sentence solely on the basis of the plea, he would have been reversed. The "maximum sentence" is no more 10 years here than it was 20 years in Apprendi (because that is what the judge could have imposed upon finding a hate crime) or death in Ring (because that is what the judge could have imposed upon finding an aggravator)....

... [T]he State tries to distinguish Apprendi and Ring by pointing out that the enumerated grounds for departure in its regime are illustrative rather than exhaustive. This distinction is immaterial. Whether the judge's authority to impose an enhanced sentence depends on finding a specified fact (as in Apprendi ), one of several specified facts (as in Ring), or any aggravating fact (as here), it remains the case that the jury's verdict alone does not authorize the sentence. The judge acquires that authority only upon finding some additional fact.

Because the State's sentencing procedure did not comply with the Sixth Amendment, petitioner's sentence is invalid.

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.... 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.

Those who would reject Apprendi are resigned to one of two alternatives. The first is that the jury need only find whatever facts the legislature chooses to label elements of the crime, and that those it labels sentencing factors--no matter how much they may increase the punishment--may be found by the judge. This would mean, for example, that a judge could sentence a man for committing murder even if the jury convicted him only of illegally possessing the firearm used to commit it--or of making an illegal lane change while fleeing the death scene. Not even Apprendi 's critics would advocate this absurd result. The jury could not function as circuit-breaker in the State's machinery of justice if it were relegated to making a determination that the defendant at some point did something wrong, a mere preliminary to a judicial inquisition into the facts of the crime the State actually seeks to punish.

The second alternative is that legislatures may establish legally essential sentencing factors within limits--limits crossed when, perhaps, the sentencing factor is a "tail which wags the dog of the substantive offense." What this means in operation is that the law must not go too far--it must not exceed the judicial estimation of the proper role of the judge.

The subjectivity of this standard is obvious. Petitioner argued below that second-degree kidnapping with deliberate cruelty was essentially the same as first-degree kidnapping, the very charge he had avoided by pleading to a lesser offense. The court conceded this might be so but held it irrelevant. Petitioner's 90-month sentence exceeded the 53-month standard maximum by almost 70%; the Washington Supreme Court in other cases has upheld exceptional sentences 15 times the standard maximum. Did the court go too far in any of these cases? There is no answer that legal analysis can provide. With too far as the yardstick, it is always possible to disagree with such judgments and never to refute them.

Whether the Sixth Amendment incorporates this manipulable standard rather than Apprendi 's bright-line rule depends on the plausibility of the claim that the Framers would have left definition of the scope of jury power up to judges' intuitive sense of how far is too far. We think that claim not plausible at all, because the very reason the Framers put a jury-trial guarantee in the Constitution is that they were unwilling to trust government to mark out the role of the jury.

By reversing the judgment below, we are not, as the State would have it, "find[ing] determinate sentencing schemes unconstitutional." This case is not about whether determinate sentencing is constitutional, only about how it can be implemented in a way that respects the Sixth Amendment. Several policies prompted Washington's adoption of determinate sentencing, including proportionality to the gravity of the offense and parity among defendants. Nothing we have said impugns those salutary objectives....

JUSTICE BREYER argues that Apprendi works to the detriment of criminal defendants who plead guilty by depriving them of the opportunity to argue sentencing factors to a judge. But nothing prevents a defendant from waiving his Apprendi rights. When a defendant pleads guilty, the State is free to seek judicial sentence enhancements so long as the defendant either stipulates to the relevant facts or consents to judicial factfinding....

The implausibility of JUSTICE BREYER's contention that Apprendi is unfair to criminal defendants is exposed by the lineup of amici in this case. It is hard to believe that the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers was somehow duped into arguing for the wrong side. JUSTICE BREYER's only authority asking that defendants be protected from Apprendi is an article written not by a criminal defense lawyer but by a law professor and former prosecutor....

JUSTICE BREYER's more general argument--that Apprendi undermines alternatives to adversarial fact-finding--is not so much a criticism of Apprendi as an assault on jury trial generally. His esteem for "non-adversarial" truth-seeking processes, supports just as well an argument against either. Our Constitution and the common-law traditions it entrenches, however, do not admit the contention that facts are better discovered by judicial inquisition than by adversarial testing before a jury. JUSTICE BREYER may be convinced of the equity of the regime he favors, but his views are not the ones we are bound to uphold. 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.

Petitioner was sentenced to prison for more than three years beyond what the law allowed for the crime to which he confessed, on the basis of a disputed finding that he had acted with "deliberate cruelty." The Framers would not have thought it too much to demand that, before depriving a man of three more years of his liberty, the State should suffer the modest inconvenience of submitting its accusation to "the unanimous suffrage of twelve of his equals and neighbours," rather than a lone employee of the State.

The judgment of the Washington Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered.

JUSTICE O'CONNOR, WITH WHOM JUSTICE BREYER JOINS, AND WITH WHOM THE CHIEF JUSTICE AND JUSTICE KENNEDY JOIN AS TO ALL BUT PART IV--B, DISSENTING.

The legacy of today's opinion, whether intended or not, will be the consolidation of sentencing power in the State and Federal Judiciaries. The Court says to Congress and state legislatures: If you want to constrain the sentencing discretion of judges and bring some uniformity to sentencing, it will cost you--dearly. Congress and States, faced with the burdens imposed by the extension of Apprendi to the present context, will either trim or eliminate altogether their sentencing guidelines schemes and, with them, 20 years of sentencing reform. It is thus of little moment that the majority does not expressly declare guidelines schemes unconstitutional; for, as residents of " Apprendi-land" are fond of saying, "the relevant inquiry is one not of form, but of effect." The "effect" of today's decision will be greater judicial discretion and less uniformity in sentencing. Because I find it implausible that the Framers would have considered such a result to be required by the Due Process Clause or the Sixth Amendment, and because the practical consequences of today's decision may be disastrous, I respectfully dissent....

Far from disregarding principles of due process and the jury trial right, as the majority today suggests, Washington's reform has served them. Before passage of the Act, a defendant charged with second degree kidnapping, like petitioner, had no idea whether he would receive a 10-year sentence or probation. The ultimate sentencing determination could turn as much on the idiosyncrasies of a particular judge as on the specifics of the defendant's crime or background. A defendant did not know what facts, if any, about his offense or his history would be considered relevant by the sentencing judge or by the parole board. After passage of the Act, a defendant charged with second degree kidnapping knows what his presumptive sentence will be; he has a good idea of the types of factors that a sentencing judge can and will consider when deciding whether to sentence him outside that range; he is guaranteed meaningful appellate review to protect against an arbitrary sentence. Criminal defendants still face the same statutory maximum sentences, but they now at least know, much more than before, the real consequences of their actions.

Washington's move to a system of guided discretion has served equal protection principles as well. Over the past 20 years, there has been a substantial reduction in racial disparity in sentencing across the State. The reduction is directly traceable to the constraining effects of the guidelines--namely, its "presumptive range[s]" and limits on the imposition of "exceptional sentences" outside of those ranges. For instance, sentencing judges still retain unreviewable discretion in first-time offender cases and in certain sex offender cases to impose alternative sentences that are far more lenient than those contemplated by the guidelines. To the extent that unjustifiable racial disparities have persisted in Washington, it has been in the imposition of such alternative sentences: "The lesson is powerful: racial disparity is correlated with unstructured and unreviewed discretion."

The majority does not, because it cannot, disagree that determinate sentencing schemes, like Washington's, serve important constitutional values. Thus, the majority says: "[t]his case is not about whether determinate sentencing is constitutional, only about how it can be implemented in a way that respects the Sixth Amendment." But extension of Apprendi to the present context will impose significant costs on a legislature's determination that a particular fact, not historically an element, warrants a higher sentence. While not a constitutional prohibition on guidelines schemes, the majority's decision today exacts a substantial constitutional tax.

The costs are substantial and real. Under the majority's approach, any fact that increases the upper bound on a judge's sentencing discretion is an element of the offense. Thus, facts that historically have been taken into account by sentencing judges to assess a sentence within a broad range--such as drug quantity, role in the offense, risk of bodily harm--all must now be charged in an indictment and submitted to a jury, simply because it is the legislature, rather than the judge, that constrains the extent to which such facts may be used to impose a sentence within a pre-existing statutory range....

The majority claims the mantle of history and original intent. But as I have explained elsewhere, a handful of state decisions in the mid-19th century and a criminal procedure treatise have little if any persuasive value as evidence of what the Framers of the Federal Constitution intended in the late 18th century. See Apprendi (O'CONNOR, J., dissenting). Because broad judicial sentencing discretion was foreign to the Framers, they were never faced with the constitutional choice between submitting every fact that increases a sentence to the jury or vesting the sentencing judge with broad discretionary authority to account for differences in offenses and offenders.

The consequences of today's decision will be as far reaching as they are disturbing. Washington's sentencing system is by no means unique. Numerous other States have enacted guidelines systems, as has the Federal Government. Today's decision casts constitutional doubt over them all and, in so doing, threatens an untold number of criminal judgments. Every sentence imposed under such guidelines in cases currently pending on direct appeal is in jeopardy....

The practical consequences for trial courts, starting today, will be equally unsettling: How are courts to mete out guidelines sentences? Do courts apply the guidelines as to mitigating factors, but not as to aggravating factors? Do they jettison the guidelines altogether? The Court ignores the havoc it is about to wreak on trial courts across the country.

It is no answer to say that today's opinion impacts only Washington's scheme and not others, such as, for example, the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. The fact that the Federal Sentencing Guidelines are promulgated by an administrative agency nominally located in the Judicial Branch is irrelevant to the majority's reasoning. The Guidelines have the force of law, and Congress has unfettered control to reject or accept any particular guideline.

The structure of the Federal Guidelines likewise does not, as the Government half-heartedly suggests, provide any grounds for distinction. Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae. Washington's scheme is almost identical to the upward departure regime established by [federal law]. If anything, the structural differences that do exist make the Federal Guidelines more vulnerable to attack. The provision struck down here provides for an increase in the upper bound of the presumptive sentencing range if the sentencing court finds, "considering the purpose of [the Act], that there are substantial and compelling reasons justifying an exceptional sentence." The Act elsewhere provides a non-exhaustive list of aggravating factors that satisfy the definition. The Court flatly rejects respondent's argument that such soft constraints, which still allow Washington judges to exercise a substantial amount of discretion, survive Apprendi. This suggests that the hard constraints found throughout.... the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, which require an increase in the sentencing range upon specified factual findings, will meet the same fate....

What I have feared most has now come to pass: Over 20 years of sentencing reform are all but lost, and tens of thousands of criminal judgments are in jeopardy. Apprendi (O'CONNOR, J., dissenting); I respectfully dissent.

JUSTICE KENNEDY, WITH WHOM JUSTICE BREYER JOINS, DISSENTING.

The majority opinion does considerable damage to our laws and to the administration of the criminal justice system for all the reasons well stated in JUSTICE O'CONNOR's dissent, plus one more: The Court, in my respectful submission, disregards the fundamental principle under our constitutional system that different branches of government "converse with each other on matters of vital common interest." Mistretta v. United States (1989). Constant, constructive discourse between our courts and our legislatures is an integral and admirable part of the constitutional design. Case-by-case judicial determinations often yield intelligible patterns that can be refined by legislatures and codified into statutes or rules as general standards. As these legislative enactments are followed by incremental judicial interpretation, the legislatures may respond again, and the cycle repeats. This recurring dialogue, an essential source for the elaboration and the evolution of the law, is basic constitutional theory in action.

Sentencing guidelines are a prime example of this collaborative process. Dissatisfied with the wide disparity in sentencing, participants in the criminal justice system, including judges, pressed for legislative reforms. In response, legislators drew from these participants' shared experiences and enacted measures to correct the problems, which ... could sometimes rise to the level of a constitutional injury. As Mistretta recognized, this interchange among different actors in the constitutional scheme is consistent with the Constitution's structural protections.

To be sure, this case concerns the work of a state legislature, and not of Congress. If anything, however, this distinction counsels even greater judicial caution. Unlike Mistretta, the case here implicates not just the collective wisdom of legislators on the other side of the continuing dialogue over fair sentencing, but also the interest of the States to serve as laboratories for innovation and experiment. See New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann (1932) (Brandeis, J., dissenting). With no apparent sense of irony that the effect of today's decision is the destruction of a sentencing scheme devised by democratically elected legislators, the majority shuts down alternative, nonjudicial, sources of ideas and experience. It does so under a faintly disguised distrust of judges and their purported usurpation of the jury's function in criminal trials. It tells not only trial judges who have spent years studying the problem but also legislators who have devoted valuable time and resources "calling upon the accumulated wisdom and experience of the Judicial Branch... on a matter uniquely within the ken of judges," Mistretta, that their efforts and judgments were all for naught. Numerous States that have enacted sentencing guidelines similar to the one in Washington State are now commanded to scrap everything and start over....

JUSTICE BREYER, WITH WHOM JUSTICE O'CONNOR JOINS, DISSENTING.

The Court makes clear that it means what it said in Apprendi v. New Jersey, (2000). In its view, the Sixth Amendment says that "'any fact that increases the penalty for a crime beyond the prescribed statutory maximum must be submitted to a jury.'" "'[P]rescribed statutory maximum'" means the penalty that the relevant statute authorizes "solely on the basis of the facts reflected in the jury verdict." Thus, a jury must find, not only the facts that make up the crime of which the offender is charged, but also all (punishment-increasing) facts about the way in which the offender carried out that crime.

It is not difficult to understand the impulse that produced this holding. Imagine a classic example--a statute (or mandatory sentencing guideline) that provides a 10-year sentence for ordinary bank robbery, but a 15-year sentence for bank robbery committed with a gun. One might ask why it should matter for jury trial purposes whether the statute (or guideline) labels the gun's presence (a) a sentencing fact about the way in which the offender carried out the lesser crime of ordinary bank robbery, or (b) a factual element of the greater crime of bank robbery with a gun? If the Sixth Amendment requires a jury finding about the gun in the latter circumstance, why should it not also require a jury to find the same fact in the former circumstance? The two sets of circumstances are functionally identical. In both instances, identical punishment follows from identical factual findings (related to, e.g. , a bank, a taking, a thing-of-value, force or threat of force, and a gun). The only difference between the two circumstances concerns a legislative (or Sentencing Commission) decision about which label("sentencing fact" or "element of a greater crime") to affix to one of the facts, namely, the presence of the gun, that will lead to the greater sentence. Given the identity of circumstances apart from the label, the jury's traditional fact-finding role, and the law's insistence upon treating like cases alike, why should the legislature's labeling choice make an important Sixth Amendment difference?

The Court in Apprendi, and now here, concludes that it should not make a difference. The Sixth Amendment's jury trial guarantee applies similarly to both. I agree with the majority's analysis, but not with its conclusion. That is to say, I agree that, classically speaking, the difference between a traditional sentencing factor and an element of a greater offense often comes down to a legislative choice about which label to affix. But I cannot jump from there to the conclusion that the Sixth Amendment always requires identical treatment of the two scenarios. That jump is fraught with consequences that threaten the fairness of our traditional criminal justice system; it distorts historical sentencing or criminal trial practices; and it upsets settled law on which legislatures have relied in designing punishment systems. The Justices who have dissented fromApprendi have written about many of these matters in other opinions. At the risk of some repetition, I shall set forth several of the most important considerations here. They lead me to conclude that I must again dissent.

The majority ignores the adverse consequences inherent in its conclusion. As a result of the majority's rule, sentencing must now take one of three forms, each of which risks either impracticality, unfairness, or harm to the jury trial right the majority purports to strengthen. This circumstance shows that the majority's Sixth Amendment interpretation cannot be right.

A first option for legislators is to create a simple, pure or nearly pure "charge offense" or "determinate" sentencing system. In such a system, an indictment would charge a few facts which, taken together, constitute a crime, such as robbery. Robbery would carry a single sentence, say, five years' imprisonment. And every person convicted of robbery would receive that sentence--just as, centuries ago, everyone convicted of almost any serious crime was sentenced to death.

Such a system assures uniformity, but at intolerable costs. [S]imple determinate sentencing systems impose identical punishments on people who committed their crimes in very different ways. When dramatically different conduct ends up being punished the same way, an injustice has taken place. Simple determinate sentencing has the virtue of treating like cases alike, but it simultaneously fails to treat different cases differently. Some commentators have leveled this charge at sentencing guideline systems themselves. The charge is doubly applicable to simple "pure charge" systems that permit no departures from the prescribed sentences, even in extraordinary cases....

A second option for legislators is to return to a system of indeterminate sentencing, such as California had before the recent sentencing reform movement. Under indeterminate systems, the length of the sentence is entirely or almost entirely within the discretion of the judge or of the parole board, which typically has broad power to decide when to release a prisoner.

When such systems were in vogue, they were criticized, and rightly so, for producing unfair disparities, including race-based disparities, in the punishment of similarly situated defendants. The length of time a person spent in prison appeared to depend on "what the judge ate for breakfast" on the day of sentencing, on which judge you got, or on other factors that should not have made a difference to the length of the sentence. And under such a system, the judge could vary the sentence greatly based upon his findings about how the defendant had committed the crime--findings that might not have been made by a "preponderance of the evidence," much less "beyond a reasonable doubt."...

A third option is that which the Court seems to believe legislators will in fact take. That is the option of retaining structured schemes that attempt to punish similar conduct similarly and different conduct differently, but modifying them to conform toApprendi's dictates. Judges would be able to depart downward from presumptive sentences upon finding that mitigating factors were present, but would not be able to depart upward unless the prosecutor charged the aggravating fact to a jury and proved it beyond a reasonable doubt. The majority argues, based on the single example of Kansas, that most legislatures will enact amendments along these lines in the face of the oncoming Apprendi train. It is therefore worth exploring how this option could work in practice, as well as the assumptions on which it depends.

This option can be implemented in one of two ways. The first way would be for legislatures to subdivide each crime into a list of complex crimes, each of which would be defined to include commonly found sentencing factors such as drug quantity, type of victim, presence of violence, degree of injury, use of gun, and so on. A legislature, for example, might enact a robbery statute, modeled on robbery sentencing guidelines, that increases punishment depending upon (1) the nature of the institution robbed, (2) the (a) presence of, (b) brandishing of, (c) other use of, a firearm, (3) making of a death threat, (4) presence of (a) ordinary, (b) serious, (c) permanent or life threatening, bodily injury, (5) abduction, (6) physical restraint, (7) taking of a firearm, (8) taking of drugs, (9) value of property loss, etc.

This possibility is, of course, merely a highly calibrated form of the "pure charge" system. And it suffers from some of the same defects. The prosecutor, through control of the precise charge, controls the punishment, thereby marching the sentencing system directly away from, not toward, one important guideline goal: rough uniformity of punishment for those who engage in roughly the same real criminal conduct. The artificial (and consequently unfair) nature of the resulting sentence is aggravated by the fact that prosecutors must charge all relevant facts about the way the crime was committed before a presentence investigation examines the criminal conduct, perhaps before the trial itself, i.e., before many of the facts relevant to punishment are known.... The second way to make sentencing guidelines Apprendi-compliant would be to require at least two juries for each defendant whenever aggravating facts are present: one jury to determine guilt of the crime charged, and an additional jury to try the disputed facts that, if found, would aggravate the sentence. Our experience with bifurcated trials in the capital punishment context suggests that requiring them for run-of-the-mill sentences would be costly, both in money and in judicial time and resources. In the context of noncapital crimes, the potential need for a second indictment alleging aggravating facts, the likely need for formal evidentiary rules to prevent prejudice, and the increased difficulty of obtaining relevant sentencing information, all will mean greater complexity, added cost, and further delay. Indeed, cost and delay could lead legislatures to revert to the complex charge offense system....

Is there a fourth option? Perhaps. Congress and state legislatures might, for example, rewrite their criminal codes, attaching astronomically high sentences to each crime, followed by long lists of mitigating facts, which, for the most part, would consist of the absence of aggravating facts. But political impediments to legislative action make such rewrites difficult to achieve; and it is difficult to see why the Sixth Amendment would require legislatures to undertake them....

The majority rests its conclusion in significant part upon a claimed historical (and therefore constitutional) imperative. According to the majority, the rule it applies in this case is rooted in "longstanding tenets of common-law criminal jurisprudence": that every accusation against a defendant must be proved to a jury and that "'an accusation which lacks any particular fact which the law makes essential to the punishment is ... no accusation within the requirements of the common law, and it is no accusation in reason.'" The historical sources upon which the majority relies, however, do not compel the result it reaches....

Given history's silence on the question of laws that structure a judge's discretion within the range provided by the legislatively labeled maximum term, it is not surprising that our modern, pre- Apprendi cases made clear that legislatures could, within broad limits, distinguish between "sentencing facts" and "elements of crimes." By their choice of label, legislatures could indicate whether a judge or a jury must make the relevant factual determination. History does not preclude legislatures from making this decision. And, allowing legislatures to structure sentencing in this way has the dual effect of enhancing and giving meaning to the Sixth Amendment's jury trial right as to core crimes, while affording additional due process to defendants in the form of sentencing hearings before judges--hearings the majority's rule will eliminate for many.

Is there a risk of unfairness involved in permitting Congress to make this labeling decision? Of course. As we have recognized, the "tail" of the sentencing fact might "wa[g] the dog of the substantive offense." Congress might permit a judge to sentence an individual for murder though convicted only of making an illegal lane change. But that is the kind of problem that the Due Process Clause is well suited to cure. [There is] the possibility that judges would have to use their own judgment in dealing with such a problem; but that is what judges are there for. And, as [I have made] clear, the alternatives are worse--not only practically, but, although the majority refuses to admit it, constitutionally as well.

Historic practice, then, does not compel the result the majority reaches. And constitutional concerns counsel the opposite.

The majority also overlooks important institutional considerations. Congress and the States relied upon what they believed was their constitutional power to decide, within broad limits, whether to make a particular fact (a) a sentencing factor or (b) an element in a greater crime.... They created sentencing reform, an effort to change the criminal justice system so that it reflects systematically not simply upon guilt or innocence but also upon what should be done about this now-guilty offender. Those efforts have spanned a generation. They have led to state sentencing guidelines and the Federal Sentencing Guideline system. These systems are imperfect and they yield far from perfect results, but I cannot believe the Constitution forbids the state legislatures and Congress to adopt such systems and to try to improve them over time. Nor can I believe that the Constitution hamstrings legislatures....

Taken together these three sets of considerations, concerning consequences, concerning history, concerning institutional reliance, leave me where I was in Apprendi, i.e., convinced that the Court is wrong. Until now, I would have thought the Court might have limited Apprendi so that its underlying principle would not undo sentencing reform efforts. Today's case dispels that illusion. At a minimum, the case sets aside numerous state efforts in that direction. Perhaps the Court will distinguish the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, but I am uncertain how. As a result of today's decision, federal prosecutors, like state prosecutors, must decide what to do next, how to handle tomorrow's case.

Consider some of the matters that federal prosecutors must know about, or guess about, when they prosecute their next case: (1) Does today's decision apply in full force to the Federal Sentencing Guidelines? (2) If so, must the initial indictment contain all sentencing factors, charged as "elements" of the crime? (3) What, then, are the evidentiary rules? Can the prosecution continue to use, say presentence reports, with their conclusions reflecting layers of hearsay? ...

Ordinarily, this Court simply waits for cases to arise in which it can answer such questions. But this case affects tens of thousands of criminal prosecutions, including federal prosecutions. Federal prosecutors will proceed with those prosecutions subject to the risk that all defendants in those cases will have to be sentenced, perhaps tried, anew. Given this consequence and the need for certainty, I would not proceed further piecemeal; rather, I would call for further argument on the ramifications of the concerns I have raised. But that is not the Court's view.

For the reasons given, I dissent.