Cite as: 530 U. S. 466 (2000)
Thomas, J., concurring
tion stretches back to the earliest years of the Republic. See, e. g., Commonwealth v. Welsh, 4 Va. 57 (1817); Smith v. Commonwealth, 14 Serg. & Rawle 69 (Pa. 1826); see also Archbold *695-*696. For my purposes, however, what is noteworthy is not so much the fact of that tradition as the reason for it: Courts treated the fact of a prior conviction just as any other fact that increased the punishment by law. By the same reasoning that the courts employed in Hope, Lacy, and the other cases discussed above, the fact of a prior conviction was an element, together with the facts constituting the core crime of which the defendant was charged, of a new, aggravated crime.
The two leading antebellum cases on whether recidivism is an element were Plumbly v. Commonwealth, 43 Mass. 413 (1841), and Tuttle v. Commonwealth, 68 Mass. 505 (1854). In the latter, the court explained the reason for treating as an element the fact of the prior conviction:
"When the statute imposes a higher penalty upon a second and third conviction, respectively, it makes the prior conviction of a similar offence a part of the description and character of the offence intended to be punished; and therefore the fact of such prior conviction must be charged, as well as proved. It is essential to an indictment, that the facts constituting the offence intended to be punished should be averred." Id., at 506.
The court rested this rule on the common law and the Massachusetts equivalent of the Sixth Amendment's Notice Clause. Ibid. See also Commonwealth v. Haynes, 107 Mass. 194, 198 (1871) (reversing sentence, upon confession of error by attorney general, in case similar to Tuttle).
Numerous other cases treating the fact of a prior conviction as an element of a crime take the same view. They make clear, by both their holdings and their language, that when a statute increases punishment for some core crime based on the fact of a prior conviction, the core crime and
507
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