Constitutional Law—Defendant’s Sixth Amendment Right Violated When Court’s Sentencing Exceeds Statutory Maximum—Blakely v. Washington, 124 S. Ct. 2531 (2004)

The United States Constitution’s Sixth Amendment protects a criminal defendant’s right to a jury trial.  Although the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause demands that the state prove to a jury each element of the crime charged beyond a reasonable doubt, facts that bear exclusively on sentencing have historically not been subject to such a requirement.  This raises the inevitable question of whether any constitutional principle distinguishes an element of a crime from a sentencing factor.  Four years after the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Apprendi v. New Jersey, in which the Court held that any fact that increases a criminal penalty beyond the prescribed statutory maximum is effectively an element and subject to the requirements of due process, the Court considered Blakely v. Washington and faced the narrower issue of what, for Apprendi purposes, constitutes a “prescribed statutory maximum” for a given crime.  The Court concluded that the statutory maximum is “the maximum sentence a judge may impose solely on the basis of the facts reflected in the jury verdict or admitted by the defendant” . . . .