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[The Silence Mailing List]

--- measl at mfn.org wrote:
> 
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2001 10:51:33 -0800
> From: Nora Callahan <nora at november.org>
> To: november-l at 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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> 
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