United States v. Haymond

139 S.Ct. 2369

204 L.Ed.2d 897

UNITED STATES, Petitioner

v.Andre Ralph HAYMOND

No. 17-1672

Supreme Court of the United States.

Argued February 26, 2019

Decided June 26, 2019

Eric J. Feigin for the petitioner.

William D. Lunn for the respondent.

Jeffrey T. Green, Matthew J. Letten, Sidley Austin LLP, Washington, DC, Sarah O'Rourke Schrup, Northwestern Supreme, Court Practicum, Chicago, IL, William D. Lunn, Counsel of Record, Tulsa, OK, for respondent.

Noel J. Francisco, Solicitor General, Brian A. Benczkowski, Assistant Attorney General, Eric J. Feigin, Christopher G. Michel, Assistants to the Solicitor General, William A. Glaser, Attorney, Department of Justice, Washington, DC, for petitioner.

Justice GORSUCH announced the judgment of the Court and delivered an opinion, in which Justice GINSBURG, Justice SOTOMAYOR, and Justice KAGAN joined.

Only a jury, acting on proof beyond a reasonable doubt, may take a person’s liberty. That promise stands as one of the Constitution’s most vital protections against arbitrary government. Yet in this case a congressional statute compelled a federal judge to send a man to prison for a minimum of five years without empaneling a jury of his peers or requiring the government to prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. As applied here, we do not hesitate to hold that the statute violates the Fifth and Sixth Amendments.

I

After a jury found Andre Haymond guilty of possessing child pornography in violation of federal law, the question turned to sentencing. The law authorized the district judge to impose a prison term of between zero and 10 years, 18 U.S.C. § 2252(b)(2), and a period of supervised release of between 5 years and life, § 3583(k). Because Mr. Haymond had no criminal history and was working to help support his mother who had suffered a stroke, the judge concluded that Mr. Haymond was "not going to get much out of being in prison" and sentenced him to a prison term of 38 months, followed by 10 years of supervised release.

After completing his prison sentence, however, Mr. Haymond encountered trouble on supervised release. He sat for multiple polygraph tests in which he denied possessing or viewing child pornography, and each time the test indicated no deception. But when the government conducted an unannounced search of his computers and cellphone, it turned up 59 images that appeared to be child pornography. Based on that discovery, the government sought to revoke Mr. Haymond’s supervised release and secure a new and additional prison sentence.

A hearing followed before a district judge acting without a jury, and under a preponderance of the evidence rather than a reasonable doubt standard. In light of expert testimony regarding the manner in which cellphones can "cache" images without the user’s knowledge, the judge found insufficient evidence to show that Mr. Haymond knowingly possessed 46 of the images. At the same time, the judge found it more likely than not that Mr. Haymond knowingly downloaded and possessed the remaining 13 images.

With that, the question turned once more to sentencing. Under 18 U.S.C. § 3583(e)(3), enacted as part of the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, a district judge who finds that a defendant has violated the conditions of his supervised release normally may (but is not required to) impose a new prison term up to the maximum period of supervised release authorized by statute for the defendant’s original crime of conviction, subject to certain limits.¹ Under that provision, the judge in this case would have been free to sentence Mr. Haymond to between zero and two additional years in prison.

But there was a complication. Under § 3583(k), added to the Act in 2003 and amended in 2006, if a judge finds by a preponderance of the evidence that a defendant on supervised release committed one of several enumerated offenses, including the possession of child pornography, the judge must impose an additional prison term of at least five years and up to life without regard to the length of the prison term authorized for the defendant’s initial crime of conviction.²

Because Mr. Haymond had committed an offense covered by § 3583(k), the judge felt bound to impose an additional prison term of at least five years. He did so, though, with reservations. It’s one thing, Judge Terence Kern said, for a judge proceeding under a preponderance of the evidence standard to revoke a defendant’s supervised release and order him to serve additional time in prison within the range already authorized by the defendant’s original conviction; after all, the jury’s verdict, reached under the reasonable doubt standard, permitted that much punishment. But the judge found it " ‘repugnant’ " that a statute might impose a new and additional "mandatory five-year" punishment without those traditional protections. Were it not for § 3583(k) ’s mandatory minimum, the judge added, he "probably would have sentenced in the range of two years or less."

On appeal to the Tenth Circuit, Mr. Haymond challenged both the factual support for his new punishment and its constitutionality. On the facts, the court of appeals held that the district court’s findings against Mr. Haymond were clearly erroneous in certain respects. Even so, the court concluded, just enough evidence remained to sustain a finding that Mr. Haymond had knowingly possessed the 13 images at issue, in violation of § 3583(k). That left the question of the statute’s constitutionality, and there the Tenth Circuit concluded that § 3583(k) violated the Fifth and Sixth Amendments. The court explained that a jury had convicted Mr. Haymond beyond a reasonable doubt of a crime carrying a prison term of zero to 10 years. Yet now Mr. Haymond faced a new potential prison term of five years to life. Because this new prison term included a new and higher mandatory minimum resting only on facts found by a judge by a preponderance of the evidence, the court held, the statute violated Mr. Haymond’s right to trial by jury.

By way of remedy, the court held the last two sentences of § 3583(k), which mandate a 5-year minimum prison term, "unconstitutional and unenforceable." 869 F.3d 1153, 1168 (C.A.10 2017). The court then vacated Mr. Haymond’s revocation sentence and remanded the case to the district court for resentencing without regard to those provisions. In effect, the court of appeals left the district court free to issue a new sentence under the preexisting statute governing most every other supervised release violation, § 3583(e). Following the Tenth Circuit’s directions, the district court proceeded to resentence Mr. Haymond to time served, as he had already been detained by that point for approximately 28 months. We granted review to consider the Tenth Circuit’s constitutional holding. 586 U. S. ––––, 139 S.Ct. 398, 202 L.Ed.2d 309 (2018).

II

Together with the right to vote, those who wrote our Constitution considered the right to trial by jury "the heart and lungs, the mainspring and the center wheel" of our liberties, without which "the body must die; the watch must run down; the government must become arbitrary." Letter from Clarendon to W. Pym (Jan. 27, 1766), in 1 Papers of John Adams 169 (R. Taylor ed. 1977). Just as the right to vote sought to preserve the people’s authority over their government’s executive and legislative functions, the right to a jury trial sought to preserve the people’s authority over its judicial functions. J. Adams, Diary Entry (Feb. 12, 1771), in 2 Diary and Autobiography of John Adams 3 (L. Butterfield ed. 1961); see also 2 J. Story, Commentaries on the Constitution § 1779, pp. 540–541 (4th ed. 1873).

Toward that end, the Framers adopted the Sixth Amendment’s promise that "[i]n all criminal prosecutions the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury." In the Fifth Amendment, they added that no one may be deprived of liberty without "due process of law." Together, these pillars of the Bill of Rights ensure that the government must prove to a jury every criminal charge beyond a reasonable doubt, an ancient rule that has "extend[ed] down centuries." Apprendi v. New Jersey , 530 U.S. 466, 477, 120 S.Ct. 2348, 147 L.Ed.2d 435 (2000).

But when does a "criminal prosecution" arise implicating the right to trial by jury beyond a reasonable doubt? At the founding, a "prosecution" of an individual simply referred to "the manner of [his] formal accusation." 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 298 (1769) (Blackstone); see also N. Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language (1st ed. 1828) (defining "prosecution" as "the process of exhibiting formal charges against an offender before a legal tribunal"). And the concept of a "crime" was a broad one linked to punishment, amounting to those "acts to which the law affixes ... punishment," or, stated differently, those "element[s] in the wrong upon which the punishment is based." 1 J. Bishop, Criminal Procedure §§ 80, 84, pp. 51–53 (2d ed. 1872) (Bishop); see also J. Archbold, Pleading and Evidence in Criminal Cases *106 (5th Am. ed. 1846) (Archbold) (discussing a crime as including any fact that "annexes a higher degree of punishment"); Blakely v. Washington , 542 U.S. 296, 309, 124 S.Ct. 2531, 159 L.Ed.2d 403 (2004) ; Apprendi , 530 U.S. at 481, 120 S.Ct. 2348.

Consistent with these understandings, juries in our constitutional order exercise supervisory authority over the judicial function by limiting the judge’s power to punish. A judge’s authority to issue a sentence derives from, and is limited by, the jury’s factual findings of criminal conduct. In the early Republic, if an indictment or "accusation ... lack[ed] any particular fact which the laws ma[d]e essential to the punishment," it was treated as "no accusation" at all. 1 Bishop § 87, at 55; see also 2 M. Hale, Pleas of the Crown *170 (1736); Archbold *106. And the "truth of every accusation" that was brought against a person had to "be confirmed by the unanimous...