Sorry for the ignorance, but what does it mean to “find certain facts”, as in:
“A majority of states leave the consecutive or concurrent sentencing decision to the judge’s discretion but a minority, including Oregon, limit that discretion by requiring sentencing judges to find certain facts before imposing consecutive sentences. Justice Ginsberg found no Sixth Amendment issue with either approach.”
The “certain facts” in this context would depend on state law, but usually they would be aggravating factors, such as a violent criminal history, use of a weapon, possibly drug involvement, whatever the legislature has decided should trigger a tougher sentence. The point is that the majority of states give a judge full discretion on the consecutive/concurrent question (regardless of whether the judge sees any of those aggravating facts in the record), while a minority of states require the judge to actually find those things in the record, based on some evidence, before the judge can legally impose the harsher, consecutive sentence. As that article said, Apprendi required juries to determine whether the government proved the necessary facts to justify a harsher sentence. This took some discretion away from the judge and made it a matter of the government’s proof, which is, in my opinion, a good thing.
Comments
2 Comments so far. Leave a comment below.Sorry for the ignorance, but what does it mean to “find certain facts”, as in:
“A majority of states leave the consecutive or concurrent sentencing decision to the judge’s discretion but a minority, including Oregon, limit that discretion by requiring sentencing judges to find certain facts before imposing consecutive sentences. Justice Ginsberg found no Sixth Amendment issue with either approach.”
The “certain facts” in this context would depend on state law, but usually they would be aggravating factors, such as a violent criminal history, use of a weapon, possibly drug involvement, whatever the legislature has decided should trigger a tougher sentence. The point is that the majority of states give a judge full discretion on the consecutive/concurrent question (regardless of whether the judge sees any of those aggravating facts in the record), while a minority of states require the judge to actually find those things in the record, based on some evidence, before the judge can legally impose the harsher, consecutive sentence. As that article said, Apprendi required juries to determine whether the government proved the necessary facts to justify a harsher sentence. This took some discretion away from the judge and made it a matter of the government’s proof, which is, in my opinion, a good thing.