Facts
In September 1995, Hugo Almendarez-Torres was indicted for being an alien "found in" the United States without the "permission and consent of the Attorney General" after being deported, in violation of 8 U.S.C. § 1326. He pleaded guilty and, at the plea hearing, admitted that he had been deported, that he had unlawfully returned to the United States, and that the earlier deportation had followed three convictions for aggravated felonies.
The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is slightly smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U.S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D.C., and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico. The State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U.S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The extremely diverse geography, climate, and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.
Title 8 of the United States Code codifies statutes relating to aliens and nationality in the United States Code.
The term aggravated felony was created by the United States Congress as part of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) to define a special category of criminal offenses. The INA says that certain aliens "convicted of an aggravated felony shall be considered to have been convicted of a particularly serious crime." Every "legal immigrant," including a "national but not a citizen of the United States," who has been convicted of any aggravated felony is ineligible for citizenship of the United States, and other than a refugee, every alien who has been convicted of any aggravated felony is ineligible to receive a visa or be admitted to the United States, if his or her "term of imprisonment was completed within the previous 15 years."
At the sentencing hearing, Almendarez-Torres pointed out that the Sixth Amendment required that all the elements of a crime be spelled out in the indictment. The indictment in this case did not mention the earlier convictions for aggravated felonies. As a result, the maximum sentence for which he was eligible was two years in prison. The district court rejected this argument and sentenced him to 85 months in prison. The Fifth Circuit affirmed the conviction and sentence.
In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a state or other authority. The term "crime" does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition, though statutory definitions have been provided for certain purposes. The most popular view is that crime is a category created by law; in other words, something is a crime if declared as such by the relevant and applicable law. One proposed definition is that a crime or offence is an act harmful not only to some individual but also to a community, society or the state. Such acts are forbidden and punishable by law.
An indictment is a criminal accusation that a person has committed a crime. In jurisdictions that use the concept of felonies, the most serious criminal offence is a felony; jurisdictions that do not use the felonies concept often use that of an indictable offence, an offence that requires an indictment.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit is a federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts in the following federal judicial districts:
Majority opinion
The statute at issue. The statute that defines the crime under which Almendarez-Torres was convicted reads:
§ 1326. Reentry of deported alien; criminal penalties for reentry of certain deported aliens.
(a) Subject to subsection (b) of this section, any alien who— (1) has been... deported... and thereafter (2) enters... or at any time is found in the United States [without the consent of the Attorney General], shall be fined under title 18, or imprisoned not more than 2 years, or both.
(b) Notwithstanding subsection (a) of this section, in the case of any alien described in such subsection— (1) whose deportation was subsequent to a conviction for commission of [certain misdemeanors] or a felony [other than an aggravated felony], such alien shall be fined under title 18, or imprisoned not more than 10 years or both, or
(2) whose deportation was subsequent to a conviction for an aggravated felony, such alien shall be fined under title 18, imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.
The Court had to decide whether subsection (b)(2), the provision that allowed the district court to impose the 85-month sentence in this case, was a separate crime or merely a penalty provision. If it defined a separate crime, then the Government's failure to include it in the indictment meant that the conviction and sentence had to be set aside. If it merely defined a penalty provision, then the conviction and sentence could stand.
Subsection (b)(2) is a penalty provision. According to the Court, it was "reasonably clear" that subsection (b)(2) defines a penalty provision. First, the provision entailed recidivism, which "is as typical a sentencing factor as one might imagine." Recidivism provisions had almost always been interpreted as penalty enhancements, not separate crimes. Second, Congress usually uses the words at the beginning of subsection (a), "subject to subsection (b)," and at the beginning of subsection (b), "notwithstanding subsection (a) of this section," to define heightened penalty provisions, not separate crimes. Finally, forcing the government to prove at trial that the defendant had previously been convicted of a crime risks making trials inherently unfair insofar as the jury, faced with such evidence, would be more inclined to convict the defendant on the basis of those prior convictions alone rather than the evidence that he is guilty of the presently charged crime.
The recidivism exception to the Sixth Amendment. The Court also held that the Sixth Amendment does not require courts to treat recidivism as an element of the crime irrespective of the intent of Congress. True, the Court had held that all "elements" of the crime must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt, but it had also held that the state could place the burden of proving some sentencing factors on the defendant. But recidivism was not like an element of a crime, or most other sentencing factors, because it could neither be presumed nor proved. Indeed, recidivism is one of the oldest and most common reasons for enhancing a criminal's punishment. Because of this historical pedigree, the Court could not find support in its modern precedents for the idea that it must be proved by the prosecution beyond a reasonable doubt. True, a few states had such a requirement on their own, but those states had never rested this requirement on a federal constitutional guarantee. Nor does the fact that the increased punishment available is significant by itself trigger a constitutional requirement that it be proved beyond a reasonable doubt.
Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466 (2000), is a landmark United States Supreme Court decision with regard to aggravating factors in crimes. The Court ruled that the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial, incorporated against the states through the Fourteenth Amendment, prohibited judges from enhancing criminal sentences beyond statutory maxima based on facts other than those decided by the jury beyond a reasonable doubt. The decision has been a cornerstone in the modern resurgence in jury trial rights. As Justice Scalia noted in his concurring opinion, the jury-trial right "has never been efficient; but it has always been free."
Gregg v. Georgia, Proffitt v. Florida, Jurek v. Texas, Woodson v. North Carolina, and Roberts v. Louisiana, 428 U.S. 153 (1976), reaffirmed the United States Supreme Court's acceptance of the use of the death penalty in the United States, upholding, in particular, the death sentence imposed on Troy Leon Gregg. Referred to by a leading scholar as the July 2 Cases and elsewhere referred to by the lead case Gregg, the Supreme Court set forth the two main features that capital sentencing procedures must employ in order to comply with the Eighth Amendment ban on "cruel and unusual punishments". The decision essentially ended the de facto moratorium on the death penalty imposed by the Court in its 1972 decision in Furman v. Georgia 408 U.S. 238 (1972).
Capital murder was a statutory offence of aggravated murder in Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, which was later adopted as a legal provision to define certain forms of aggravated murder in the United States. In some parts of the U.S., this term can define certain acts of aggravated murder: a capital murder is any murder that makes the perpetrator eligible for the death penalty.
The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, Division C of Pub.L. 104–208, 110 Stat. 3009-546, enacted September 30, 1996, made major changes to the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) of the United States, which was mainly due to the rapidly growing illegal immigration problem in the country. "These IIRIRA changes became effective on April 1, 1997."
Deportation of Cambodian refugees from the United States refers to the refoulment of Cambodian-Americans convicted of a common crime in the United States. The overwhelming majority of these individuals in removal proceedings were admitted to the United States in the 1980s with their refugee family members after escaping from the Cambodian genocide, and have continuously spent decades in the United States as legal immigrants.
Walton v. Arizona, 497 U.S. 639 (1990), was a United States Supreme Court case that upheld two important aspects of the capital sentencing scheme in Arizona — judicial sentencing and the aggravating factor "especially heinous, cruel, or depraved" — as not unconstitutionally vague. The Court overruled the first of these holdings in Ring v. Arizona, 536 U.S. 584 (2002). The second of these holdings has yet to be overturned.
Leocal v. Ashcroft, 543 U.S. 1 (2004), held that aliens may not be deported after being convicted of DUI if the DUI statute that defines the offense does not contain a mens rea element or otherwise allows a conviction for merely negligent conduct.
Lopez v. Gonzales, 549 U.S. 47 (2006), held that an "aggravated felony" includes only conduct punishable as a felony under the federal Controlled Substances Act, regardless of whether state law classifies such conduct as a felony or a misdemeanor. Under federal law, there are two main consequences of having a prior conviction for an "aggravated felony." One is that, if the convicted person is an alien, he will be deported. The other is that, with respect to certain federal crimes, a prior conviction for an aggravated felony provides a sentencing enhancement. In this case, Lopez had been convicted of conduct that was a felony under South Dakota law but was a misdemeanor under federal law. Accordingly, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that this conviction could not serve as a basis for deporting him.
Jones v. United States, 526 U.S. 227 (1999), is a United States Supreme Court case interpreting the federal carjacking statute, 18 U.S.C. § 2119, to set forth three distinct crimes, each with distinct elements. The Court drew this conclusion from the structure of the statute, under which two subsections provided for additional punishment if the defendant inflicts more serious harm. The Court also distinguished Almendarez-Torres v. United States, 523 U.S. 224 (1998), because that case allowed for sentencing enhancement based on a prior conviction.
The Criminal Law Act 1967 (c.58) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. However, with some minor exceptions, it generally applies to only England and Wales. It made some major changes to English criminal law. Most of it is still in force.
United States criminal procedure derives from several sources of law: the baseline protections of the United States Constitution, federal and state statutes; federal and state rules of criminal procedure ; and state and federal case law. Criminal procedures are distinct from civil procedures in the US.
Burglary is a statutory offence in England and Wales.
United States v. Valenzuela-Bernal, 458 U.S. 858 (1982), is a United States Supreme Court case that determined the constitutionality of deporting aliens who might give testimony in criminal alien smuggling prosecutions. Because deporting alien witnesses might take away a testimony that would be both “material and favorable” to the defendant, it gives rise to a potential motion from the defense to dismiss the indictment under the Compulsory Process Clause of the Sixth Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.
The United States Constitution contains several provisions related to criminal sentencing.
Moncrieffe v. Holder, 569 U.S. 184 (2013), is a United States Supreme Court decision in which the court ruled in a 7–2 decision that "social sharing of a small amount of marijuana" by a legal immigrant does not constitute aggravated felony and hence does not require mandatory deportation.
Southern Union Co. v. United States, 567 U.S. 343 (2012), was a Supreme Court decision that applied the rule set out in Apprendi v. New Jersey—that certain non-conviction elements of a crime must be proved to a jury—to criminal penalties. The 6-3 decision was authored by Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
Luna Torres v. Lynch, 578 U.S. ___ (2016), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that an "aggravated felony" under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) encompasses every conviction of section 150.10 of the New York Penal Law, regardless if the state offense is missing the interstate or foreign commerce element.
Sessions v. Dimaya, 584 U.S. ___ (2018), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that 18 U.S.C. § 16(b), a statute defining certain "aggravated felonies" for immigration purposes, is unconstitutionally vague. The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) classifies some categories of crimes as "aggravated felonies", and immigrants convicted of those crimes, including those legally present in the United States, are very likely to be deported. Those categories include "crimes of violence", which are defined by the "elements clause" and the "residual clause". The Court struck down the "residual clause", which classified every felony that, "by its nature, involves a substantial risk" of "physical force against the person or property" as an aggravated felony.
Particularly serious crime in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) of the United States is a predecessor of the current aggravated felony. Both of these terms are synonymous in the INA. The term "particularly serious crime" was coined for the first time when the U.S. Congress enacted the Refugee Act in 1980. As of September 30, 1996, every aggravated felony conviction for which a sentence of at least 1 year of imprisonment was actually imposed by a court of law may qualify as a particularly serious crime. This requires a case-by-case analysis. An offense that involves murder or torture is considered a particularly serious crime even if the possible term of imprisonment is 2 years or less.
