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Thursday, December 15, 2005
Ind. Decisions - Juvenile record can be weighed
"Juvenile record can be weighed" is the headline to an AP story posted early this morning on the Indianapolis Star website. The decision referenced is Kenna D. Ryle v. State, which was a subject of this ILB entry yesterday. Some quotes from the AP story:
Judges can weigh a person’s juvenile record without deferring to juries when sentencing a defendant for crimes committed as an adult, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled.[More] Here is the Sentencing Law Blog's Prof. Douglas Berman's just posted entry on the ruling, "Indiana Supreme Court gives broad interpretation to prior conviction exception."
The unanimous decision clarified an area of sentencing guidelines made cloudy by recent court rulings shifting much of the decision-making power in sentencing from judges to juries. * * *Under the 2004 U.S. Supreme Court ruling [Apprendi v. New Jersey], a jury must decide the validity of a defendant’s prior convictions before they can be used to help determine a sentence. But courts have differed over whether that requirement applies to juvenile adjudications, in which there is no jury trial. The Indiana Supreme Court decided it does not apply.
Otherwise, Chief Justice Randall T. Shepard wrote, juvenile cases would have to be retried in front of juries, or juries in adult trials would have to determine if the defendant had been found guilty in a previous juvenile proceeding — a matter of record.
“A decision to require the jury to determine the ’fact’ of prior juvenile adjudications would result in an untold number of defendants clogging the trial courts ...,” Shepard wrote.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on December 15, 2005 08:55 AM
Posted to Ind. Sup.Ct. Decisions