Cite as: 515 U. S. 506 (1995)
Opinion of the Court
"the trier of fact to determine the existence of an element of the crime—that is, an 'ultimate' or 'elemental' fact—from the existence of one or more 'evidentiary' or 'basic' facts . . . . Nonetheless, in criminal cases, the ultimate test of any device's constitutional validity in a given case remains constant: the device must not undermine the factfinder's responsibility at trial, based on evidence adduced by the State, to find the ultimate facts beyond a reasonable doubt." Allen, supra, at 156.
See also Sullivan, supra, at 277 ("The right [to jury trial] includes, of course, as its most important element, the right to have the jury, rather than the judge, reach the requisite finding of 'guilty' "); Patterson, supra, at 204; Winship, supra, at 361, 363.
B
The Government next argues that, even if the jury is generally entitled to pass on all elements of a crime, there is a historical exception for materiality determinations in perjury prosecutions. We do not doubt that historical practice is relevant to what the Constitution means by such concepts as trial by jury, see Murray's Lessee v. Hoboken Land & Improvement Co., 18 How. 272, 276-277 (1856); Holland v. Illinois, 493 U. S. 474, 481 (1990), and it is precisely historical practice that we have relied on in concluding that the jury must find all the elements. The existence of a unique historical exception to this principle—and an exception that reduces the power of the jury precisely when it is most important, i. e., in a prosecution not for harming another individual, but for offending against the Government itself— would be so extraordinary that the evidence for it would have to be convincing indeed. It is not so.
The practice of having courts determine the materiality of false statements in perjury prosecutions is neither as old, nor as uniform, as the Government suggests. In England, no pre-Revolution cases appear to have addressed the question,
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