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--- measl@mfn.org wrote:

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2001 10:51:33 -0800 From: Nora Callahan To: november-l@november.org Subject: Nov-L: Supremes will interpret Apprendi in guns/drug offenses early 2002

Supreme Court accepts challenge of federal gun crime

GINA HOLLAND, Associated Press Writer

(12-10) 11:23 PST WASHINGTON (AP) --

The Supreme Court agreed Monday to consider the fairness of federal prison terms for inmates given longer sentences for using a firearm in their crimes.

The question for justices: whether juries or judges should decide if someone brandished or discharged a weapon while committing a crime.

In federal courts, juries must decide beyond a reasonable doubt if there was a crime. Whether a gun was involved can be settled separately by a judge, who uses a lesser standard of proof.

The Supreme Court will review the case of William Joseph Harris, whose attorneys argued that the process violates defendants� constitutional rights to due process and a jury trial. The weapon allegation does not have to be listed in an indictment.

Congress requires longer prison sentences for people who use guns during violent crimes or drug dealing. The penalty for brandishing a weapon is at least seven years in prison and for discharging a gun is 10 years.

Harris had pleaded guilty in 1999 to selling marijuana out of his pawn shop in Albemarle, N.C. He wore a pistol in a hip holster while at work for safety reasons, his lawyer told the court. Harris bragged during one sale that his homemade bullets could pierce a police officer�s armored jacket, according to government records.

A judge convicted him of brandishing a gun while engaged in drug trafficking, then sentenced him to the mandatory seven years in prison.

"He could have received seven years even without that finding," the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in rejecting his case.

The Bush administration had urged the Supreme Court to also turn back Harris� appeal, arguing that Congress in 1998 properly set penalties for criminals who use weapons.

Justices decided to hear arguments in the case next year.

Harris� appeal relies on a 2000 Supreme Court ruling that overturned a New Jersey man�s sentence for a hate crime. Justices said a jury�not a judge� should have decided if Charles Apprendi was motivated by bias when he fired shots into the home of a black family. Apprendi, who is white, had gotten a longer sentence because a judge ruled it was a hate crime.

"Any fact that increases the penalty for a crime beyond the prescribed statutory maximum must be submitted to a jury, and proved beyond a reasonable doubt," the court said in the Apprendi case.

Multiple appeals are pending or have come through the Supreme Court with similar arguments from defendants in drug cases.

The case is Harris v. United States, 00-10666.

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