John Cunningham v. California (549 U.S. 270)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided January 22, 2007 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 549 U.S. 270 · 127 S. Ct. 856
- Decided
- January 22, 2007
- Term
- October Term 2006
- Vote
- 6–3
- Majority author
- Justice Ginsburg
- Issue area
- Criminal Procedure
- Disposition
- Reversed and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
- Constitutional ruling
- State/territorial law held unconstitutional
Opinion excerpt
Justice Ginsburg delivered the opinion of the Court. California’s determinate sentencing law (DSL) assigns to the trial judge, not . to the jury, authority to find the facts that expose a defendant to an elevated “upper term” sentence. The facts so found are neither inherent in the jury’s verdict nor embraced by the defendant’s plea, and they need only be established by a preponderance of the evidence, not beyond a reasonable doubt. The question presented is whether the DSL, by placing sentence-elevating factfinding within the judge’s province, violates a defendant’s right to trial by jury safeguarded by the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments. We hold that it does. As this Court’s decisions instruct, the Federal Constitution’s jury-trial guarantee proscribes a sentencing scheme that allows a judge to impose a sentence above the statutory maximum based on a fact, other than a prior conviction, not found by a jury or admitted by the defendant. Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U. S. 466 (2000); Ring v. Arizona, 536 U. S. 584 (2002); Blakely v. Washington, 542 U.S. 296 (2004); United States v. Booker, 543 U. S. 220 (2005). “[T]he relevant 'statutory maximum,’ ” this Court has clarified, “is not the maximum sentence a judge may impose after finding additional facts, but the maximum he may impose without any additional findings.” Blakely, 542 U. S., at 303-304 (emphasis in original). In…
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