466
OCTOBER TERM, 1999
Syllabus
certiorari to the supreme court of new jersey
No. 99-478. Argued March 28, 2000—Decided June 26, 2000
Petitioner Apprendi fired several shots into the home of an African-American family and made a statement—which he later retracted—that he did not want the family in his neighborhood because of their race. He was charged under New Jersey law with, inter alia, second-degree possession of a firearm for an unlawful purpose, which carries a prison term of 5 to 10 years. The count did not refer to the State's hate crime statute, which provides for an enhanced sentence if a trial judge finds, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the defendant committed the crime with a purpose to intimidate a person or group because of, inter alia, race. After Apprendi pleaded guilty, the prosecutor filed a motion to enhance the sentence. The court found by a preponderance of the evidence that the shooting was racially motivated and sentenced Apprendi to a 12-year term on the firearms count. In upholding the sentence, the appeals court rejected Apprendi's claim that the Due Process Clause requires that a bias finding be proved to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. The State Supreme Court affirmed.
Held: The Constitution requires that any fact that increases the penalty for a crime beyond the prescribed statutory maximum, other than the fact of a prior conviction, must be submitted to a jury and proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Pp. 474-497.
(a) The answer to the narrow constitutional question presented— whether Apprendi's sentence was permissible, given that it exceeds the 10-year maximum for the offense charged—was foreshadowed by the holding in Jones v. United States, 526 U. S. 227, that, with regard to federal law, the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause and the Sixth Amendment's notice and jury trial guarantees require that any fact other than prior conviction that increases the maximum penalty for a crime must be charged in an indictment, submitted to a jury, and proved beyond a reasonable doubt. The Fourteenth Amendment commands the same answer when a state statute is involved. Pp. 474-476.
(b) The Fourteenth Amendment right to due process and the Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury, taken together, 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. E. g., In re Winship, 397 U. S. 358, 364. The historical foundation for these principles extends down centuries into the common law. While
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