Court rules on death sentences

Arizona officials had defended their capital-sentencing scheme by saying it was enacted as a result of Eighth Amendment concerns about the death penalty being unfairly administered.

But the high court stressed that the Sixth Amendment jury guarantee does apply to capital-punishment sentencing procedures in the same way it applies in other criminal cases.

"The right to a trial by jury guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment would be senselessly diminished if it encompassed the factfinding necessary to increase a defendant's sentence by two years, but not the factfinding necessary to put him to death," writes Justice Ginsburg.

In a dissent, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said the decision will encourage a new flood of appeals by death-row and other inmates.

She notes that in the two years since the Apprendi decision, federal appeals courts have decided 1,802 cases challenging the constitutionality of their sentences.

"These federal appeals are likely only the tip of the iceberg, as federal criminal prosecutions represent a tiny fraction of the total number of criminal prosecutions nationwide," Justice O'Connor writes in a dissent joined by Chief Justice William Rehnquist.

In a related decision yesterday, the high court declined to extend its ruling in the Apprendi case to strike down mandatory minimum sentences imposed by a judge rather than a jury.

Instead, the court, in a 5-to-4 decision in a case called Harris v. US, said that a mandatory minimum sentence imposed by a judge does not violate the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of a jury trial, provided the resulting sentence falls within the maximum range of punishments authorized by a jury's verdict.

The Harris case involved a challenge to a federal mandatory minimum law that sentenced William Harris to seven years in prison for "brandishing" a gun during a drug-trafficking transaction. The federal law for possession of a firearm during a drug deal calls for a sentence of five years to life in prison.

Lawyers for Mr. Harris argued that without the finding by a judge at Harris's sentencing hearing that he had "brandished" the gun, his sentence would have been five years rather than seven. The lawyers argue that such a crucial fact should have been presented to the jury at trial rather than left for a judge at sentencing.

The court disagreed. "A judicial finding of brandishing does not evade the requirements of the Fifth and Sixth Amendments," Justice Anthony Kennedy writes for the majority. "That factor [brandishing] need not be alleged in the indictment, submitted to the jury, or proved beyond a reasonable doubt."

• Liz Marlantes contributed to this report.

Alabama 187

Arizona 129

Colorado 5

Delaware 20

Florida 383

Idaho 21

Indiana 39

Montana 6

Nebraska 7

Source: Associated Press

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