[GCFL-discuss] (no subject)
gcfl-discuss at gcfl.net
gcfl-discuss at gcfl.net
Fri Aug 6 20:56:11 CDT 2004
Siaryls,
Thats the best thing I have ever seen you write ! Maybe we can agree on
more than one thing :If more Americans read the
decisions of our courts, instead of taking the word of inevitably biased
media presentations, plus the outraged or exultant cries of the losers
and winners on each side, we would be a lot better off. It is all easily
accessible on the internet to day, no need to rummage around a law
library.
JEFF
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From: gcfl-discuss at gcfl.net
To: Je ff <lordoftheringsphan at juno.com>
Cc: "Discussion of the Good, Clean Funnies List" <gcfl-discuss at gcfl.net>
Date: Thu, 5 Aug 2004 21:33:57 -0500
Subject: Re: [GCFL-discuss] Scalia
Message-ID: <20040806.112700.3526.1.jsiarlys at juno.com>
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Dear greenBubble,
Unauthorized review, forwarding, printing, copying, distributing, or
using information about the case and Justice Scalia's reasoning is
strictly prohibited and may be unlawful.
Just kidding. The disclaimer your office system puts on email often is
longer than your own remarks.
I'm sorry if I didn't make the issues of the case clear.
In 2000, the Supreme Court decided a case called Apprendi v. New Jersey.
The court ruled that the defendant in the case, convicted of one crime by
a jury, could only be sentenced by a judge for that crime. State law
allowed the judge to make an independent finding of an aggravating
circumstance justifying a higher sentence. The court said that if the
Sixth Amendment guarantee of trial by jury means anything, it means that
a criminal sentence must be authorized by a jury verdict as to what crime
a person has committed.
In this case, New Jersey law authorized a 20 year sentence, for a crime
otherwise subject to only a 10 year sentence, if the crime was committed
with a purpose to intimidate because of race, color, gender, handicap,
religoin, sexual orientation or ethnicity. No problem with that, but New
Jersey law assigned to the judge to make that determination at
sentencing. The Supreme Court said that finding had to be made by a jury
in order to impose the higher sentence.
Blakely v. Washington concerned a man with severe psychological
disorders, including paranoid schizophrenia, who kidnapped his wife of 25
years after she filed for divorce. The state offered a plea bargain to
second degree kidnapping involving domestic violence and use of a
firearm, which carried a maximum sentence of 53 months (no parole). The
judge decided there was an aggravating factor, acting with deliberate
cruelty, and imposed a 90 month sentence.
The court's decision, written by Scalia, again said, any fact which
authorizes an increased sentence must be decided by a jury, not by the
judge after the jury brings in its verdict.
Scalia, and the court majority, based this ruling on two long established
principles of the common law: the truth of every accusation against a
defendant should afterwards be confrimed by the unanimous suffrage of
twelceof his equals and neighbors, and, an accusation which lacks any
particular fact which the law makes essential to the punishment is no
accusation at all.
What has been ruled unacceptable is for "a defendant, with no warning in
either his indictment of plea" to "routinely see his maximum otential
sentence balloon from as little as five years to as much as life
imprisonment, based not on facts proved to his peers beyond a reasonable
doubt, but on facts extracted after trial from a report compiled by a
probation officer who the judge thinks more likely got it right than got
it wrong."
But I don't want to run on too long. I really recommend reading the
decision if you find this interesting. If more Americans read the
decisions of our courts, instead of taking the word of inevitably biased
media presentations, plus the outraged or exultant cries of the losers
and winners on each side, we would be a lot better off. It is all easily
accessible on the internet to day, no need to rummage around a law
library.
Siarlys
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