530 U.S. 466 (2000) (U.S. Supreme Court)
Apprendi v. New Jersey is a cornerstone of modern criminal procedure and sentencing law.
Whether the Due Process Clause and the Sixth Amendment require that any fact—other than a prior conviction—that increases a defendant's sentence beyond the statutory maximum be submitted to a jury and proved beyond a reasonable doubt, rather than found by a judge under a lower standard of proof.
Except for the fact of a prior conviction, any fact that increases the penalty for a crime beyond the prescribed statutory maximum is the functional equivalent of an element of a greater offense and must be submitted to a jury and proved beyond a reasonable doubt. In federal prosecutions, such facts must also be charged in the indictment. A legislature's label of a fact as a "sentencing factor" does not avoid these constitutional requirements.
Yes. The New Jersey statute was unconstitutional as applied to Apprendi because it permitted the judge to increase the sentence beyond the statutory maximum based on a fact—the purpose to intimidate on the basis of race—not submitted to a jury and proved beyond a reasonable doubt.
Apprendi reoriented American sentencing around the jury's verdict and the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard. It catalyzed a line of transformative decisions: Ring v. Arizona (requiring juries to find death-eligibility aggravators), Blakely v. Washington (defining statutory maximum as the highest sentence a judge may impose based solely on jury-found or admitted facts), United States v. Booker (rendering the Federal Sentencing Guidelines advisory), Southern Union Co. v. United States (applying Apprendi to criminal fines), and Alleyne v. United States (extending the rule to facts increasing mandatory minimums). For students, Apprendi is indispensable for understanding how legislatures must structure crimes, how prosecutors must charge and prove enhancing facts, and how judges may sentence within constitutional bounds.