A Cold Day in Apprendi-land: Oregon v. Ice Brings Unknown Forecast for Apprendi’s Continued Vitality in the Capital Sentencing Context

by G. BEN COHEN, BIDISH SARMA, and ROBERT J. SMITH

When Charles Apprendi fired two .22 caliber gunshots into the home of the first African-American family to move into a previously all-white New Jersey neighborhood, he could not have known that those shots would ring throughout federal constitutional procedure. After pleading guilty to two counts of second-degree possession of a firearm with an unlawful purpose, Apprendi faced a sentencing range of ten to twenty years of imprisonment. The State then motioned for an enhanced sentence under New Jersey’s hate crime statute and argued that Apprendi committed the crime for a biased purpose. The judge held an evidentiary hearing and concluded by a preponderance of the evidence that the “crime was motivated by racial bias” and that Apprendi had the “intention to intimidate.” Based on these findings, the judge elevated the relevant maximum sentence from twenty years for the two second-degree counts to an aggregate thirty years of imprisonment—ten years above the maximum punishment available on the basis of the guilty plea alone.

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