Winter v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc.
Winter v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc.
On appeal from the Oregon Supreme Court
Who is who? Oregon state in the north-western United States, with a rocky coastline along the Pacific Ocean, and temperate weather. Thomas Eugene Ice is the convicted criminal appealing his 28-year sentence for sexually assaulting an 11-year old girl.
A jury found that Ice committed two counts of burglary and four counts of sexual assault. The trial judge found that the burglary crimes and two of the sexual assault crimes should lead to consecutive, rather than concurrent sentences, because those crimes were "separate incidents." The judge sentenced two of the sexual assault crimes to run concurrently with the other offenses.
Here's how this works. A criminal is convicted of two crimes - on with a two year imprisonment and one with a six year imprisonment. Consecutive terms would add the two sentences together — resulting in eight years in prison. Concurrent terms would allow the sentences for each crime to be served at the same time — resulting in six years in prison.
Ice appealed to the state's appeals court, which reversed the lower court. In Oregon, the state statutes prefers concurrent prison sentences over consecutive prison sentences. But, the statutes give the judge the power to find a facts necessary to change a concurrent term into a consecutive term. The state appeals court held that two recent Supreme Court cases Apprendi and Blakely required the jury to find facts that would justify consecutive, rather than concurrent sentences. The Oregon State supreme court reversed the appeals court, and decided that those U.S. Supreme Court cases didn't prevent the trial judge from making the factual determinations that allowed a consecutive sentence.
So this case seems like those cases. The judge found several facts that increased Ice's prison sentence: That Ice's conduct was separate, that he was likely to repeat it, and that each incident created a risk of greater harm to the victim. So the judge made a factual finding that a jury could make. But, as the Court explains, this would be a gross generalization.
The specific concern in Apprendi and Blakely was that judges were stepping out of their traditional roles. Juries had historically found those facts that led to increased prison terms, and the sentencing guidelines threatened to undermine the jury’s domain as a bulwark between the State and the accused.
But not in this case. State sovereignty has long allowed that Constitutional rights do not rigidly prevent experiments in state criminal justice systems. Also, Judges, traditionally, had complete discretion to choose concurrent or consecutive sentences.
And this tradition persuaded the Court that the Oregon statute did not raise a Constitutional concern. Tradition is not the only reason for agreeing with Oregon. Other policy reasons the Supreme Court used for not extending Apprendi and Blakely are: (1) the Court does not wish to diminish the states' power to experiment with their criminal justice systems without compelling reasons, (2) the innovation here was a benefit to the accused, because a common law judge could have made all the crimes concurrent without any factual findings, (3) other state laws might have been harmed without good reason, (4) states would find it difficult to implement a rule that so fundamentally changed the role of a judge in sentencing.