486
Opinion of the Court
datory Minimum Sentencing Act, 42 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 9712 (1982). According to its provisions, anyone convicted of certain felonies would be subject to a mandatory minimum penalty of five years' imprisonment if the judge found, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the person "visibly possessed a firearm" in the course of committing one of the spec-ified felonies. 477 U. S., at 81-82. Articulating for the first time, and then applying, a multifactor set of criteria for determining whether the Winship protections applied to bar such a system, we concluded that the Pennsylvania statute did not run afoul of our previous admonitions against relieving the State of its burden of proving guilt, or tailoring the mere form of a criminal statute solely to avoid Winship's strictures. 477 U. S., at 86-88.
We did not, however, there budge from the position that (1) constitutional limits exist to States' authority to define away facts necessary to constitute a criminal offense, id., at 85-88, and (2) that a state scheme that keeps from the jury facts that "expos[e] [defendants] to greater or additional punishment," id., at 88, may raise serious constitutional concern. As we explained:
"Section 9712 neither alters the maximum penalty for the crime committed nor creates a separate offense calling for a separate penalty; it operates solely to limit the sentencing court's discretion in selecting a penalty within the range already available to it without the special finding of visible possession of a firearm. . . . The statute gives no impression of having been tailored to permit the visible possession finding to be a tail which wags the dog of the substantive offense. Petitioners' claim that visible possession under the Pennsylvania statute is 'really' an element of the offenses for which they are being punished—that Pennsylvania has in effect defined a new set of upgraded felonies—would have at least more superficial appeal if a finding of visible possession exposed them to greater or additional punish-
Page: Index Previous 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007