© St. Petersburg Times, published February 8, 2002
If a New Jersey man named Charles C. Apprendi Jr. had not been such a racist fool, yet won his court case anyway, then Florida's death penalty law might not be up in the air today.
But he did, and so it is.
The world of law is bizarre. Here is the connection between seemingly unrelated matters in New Jersey, Arizona and Florida, and why now we all hold our breath for the U.S. Supreme Court.
Will Florida's 370 existing death sentences, and those in several other states, be overturned? Defense lawyers say it's possible. Prosecutors say there's no chance. In the meantime, everybody waits.
Figure on a few months.
Back to our disagreeable fellow, Apprendi. He was arrested for firing shots -- on four different nights -- into the home of an African-American family. Luckily, no one died. Apprendi gave a statement to authorities (which he later retracted) that he did not want black people in the neighborhood.
Apprendi struck a plea bargain. However, the prosecutors then asked the judge to impose an extra long sentence under New Jersey's hate crimes law. The judge agreed.
Apprendi said that was not what he bargained for. He appealed his sentence all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court -- and won. On June 26, 2000, the Supremes ruled 5-4 that New Jersey could not dish out "enhanced" sentences based on facts that had not been proven to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt.
This is a potentially huge ruling. What will it mean for all those states (like Florida) where judges decide the sentence of criminals? Will every factor in a judge's decision first have to be proven to a jury? What about all those factors that are added up in Florida's sentencing guidelines?
Making the Supreme Court's ruling even weirder was that Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas were on the "liberal" side, voting to make it harder to impose a tougher sentence. (This is mostly because they were just being grumpy about hate crime laws.)
Let us go now to Arizona. Another real winner, Timothy Stuart Ring, helped hijack a Wells-Fargo truck in that state. The driver was killed. Ring was convicted of first-degree murder and was sentenced to death. As provided in Arizona law, the judge ruled that there were aggravating factors to justify death.
In their appeal, Ring's lawyers looked across the nation to the New Jersey case. If judges in New Jersey can't hand out tougher sentences for hate crimes, without it first being decided by a jury, then why should judges anywhere be able to decide something is an aggravating factor meriting the death penalty?
The Arizona courts did not buy it. But last month, on Jan. 11, the U.S. Supreme Court announced that it would hear the argument of Ring's lawyers.
This has set off shock waves in the world of death penalty law.
Are the Supremes really ready to say that judges can't declare something is an aggravating factor, unless it's been proven beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury?
Or is the situation just the opposite -- are Justices Scalia, Thomas and their colleagues eager to straighten out the mess?
How does this affect us in Florida? Unlike Arizona, Florida has the jury recommend a sentence of life or death. But like Arizona, here the judge has the final say on whether aggravating factors justify death.
Here is a prediction: Florida's death law will easily be distinguished from the New Jersey case. Up there, the guy got sentenced for an offense of which he was never convicted, a hate crime. The court said that's not fair.
But down here in Florida, we're simply talking about the range of sentences available for a single crime -- first-degree murder. Death is not an "enhanced" sentence, merely the maximum one. At any rate, aggravating factors in Florida already have to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt during the sentencing phase of the trial.
Bottom line: Will Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas vote to wipe out hundreds of death sentences around the country? Nah.
-- You can reach Howard Troxler at (727) 893-8505 or at troxler@sptimes.com.