Depends upon your point of view as to whether or not this is "a good thing". Project Exile in danger?
STORY
SCOTT MOONEYHAM
RALEIG, Dec. 29 – The state Court of Appeals on Friday ruled unconstitutional a law allowing judges to impose harsher sentences for criminals who use guns while committing a felony, citing a U.S. Supreme Court decision involving a New Jersey hate crime statute.
The decision overturns a seven-year prison sentence given to a Charlotte man convicted of kidnapping and assaulting his former girlfriend at gunpoint.
The court ordered that Eric Earl Guice be resentenced and that the five-year term added to his prison term for using a gun being dropped.
Guice was convicted in 1999 of forcing his way into the home of former girlfriend Kris Wall, chasing her to a neighbor’s home and then holding her and the neighbor at gunpoint.
In his appeal, Guice’s lawyers cited the case of New Jersey man Charles C. Apprendi, who was sentenced to 12 years in prison for firing bullets at the home of a black family in 1994.
The nation’s high court threw out Apprendi’s prison sentence in June, saying judges should not decide whether criminal defendants are guilty of a crime that can be used to increase their prison sentences. The court said the Constitution requires that juries make that determination.
Guice’s lawyers argued that the North Carolina felony gun law is essentially no different than the New Jersey hate crime statute, giving judges discretion to impose tougher sentences without a finding by a jury that a gun was involved in the crime.
The appeals court agreed, saying in a 3-0 decision that the North Carolina law clearly allows a judge, not a jury, to make a ``factual determination.”
``The statute thus deprives defendants of their liberty while categorically denying them the attendant historical safeguards: The right to have facts subjecting them to an increased penalty submitted to an impartial jury and proved beyond a reasonable doubt,” Judge James Wynn wrote for the court.
Officials at the Attorney General’s Office said it was too early to say whether they would seek an appeal before the state Supreme Court.
``The state will be evaluating the decision by the Court of Appeals to determine whether we will be petitioning the Supreme Court,” Attorney General spokesman Ruffin Poole said.
Chris Fialko, a lawyer who represented Guice, said he was not surprised by the decision. ``I felt confident after reading Apprendi that the way North Carolina gun enhancement is written that it is clearly unconstitutional. It (the appeals court decision) just followed the precedent set in Apprendi,” Fialko said.
The Apprendi decision has resulted in a spate of appeals in state and federal courts across the country.
Defendants are using the ruling to challenge drug laws that allow judges to decide the amounts illegal drugs sold, fraud convictions in which judges determined amounts lost and gun cases similar to Guice’s.
© 2000 Associated Press.
STORY
SCOTT MOONEYHAM
RALEIG, Dec. 29 – The state Court of Appeals on Friday ruled unconstitutional a law allowing judges to impose harsher sentences for criminals who use guns while committing a felony, citing a U.S. Supreme Court decision involving a New Jersey hate crime statute.
The decision overturns a seven-year prison sentence given to a Charlotte man convicted of kidnapping and assaulting his former girlfriend at gunpoint.
The court ordered that Eric Earl Guice be resentenced and that the five-year term added to his prison term for using a gun being dropped.
Guice was convicted in 1999 of forcing his way into the home of former girlfriend Kris Wall, chasing her to a neighbor’s home and then holding her and the neighbor at gunpoint.
In his appeal, Guice’s lawyers cited the case of New Jersey man Charles C. Apprendi, who was sentenced to 12 years in prison for firing bullets at the home of a black family in 1994.
The nation’s high court threw out Apprendi’s prison sentence in June, saying judges should not decide whether criminal defendants are guilty of a crime that can be used to increase their prison sentences. The court said the Constitution requires that juries make that determination.
Guice’s lawyers argued that the North Carolina felony gun law is essentially no different than the New Jersey hate crime statute, giving judges discretion to impose tougher sentences without a finding by a jury that a gun was involved in the crime.
The appeals court agreed, saying in a 3-0 decision that the North Carolina law clearly allows a judge, not a jury, to make a ``factual determination.”
``The statute thus deprives defendants of their liberty while categorically denying them the attendant historical safeguards: The right to have facts subjecting them to an increased penalty submitted to an impartial jury and proved beyond a reasonable doubt,” Judge James Wynn wrote for the court.
Officials at the Attorney General’s Office said it was too early to say whether they would seek an appeal before the state Supreme Court.
``The state will be evaluating the decision by the Court of Appeals to determine whether we will be petitioning the Supreme Court,” Attorney General spokesman Ruffin Poole said.
Chris Fialko, a lawyer who represented Guice, said he was not surprised by the decision. ``I felt confident after reading Apprendi that the way North Carolina gun enhancement is written that it is clearly unconstitutional. It (the appeals court decision) just followed the precedent set in Apprendi,” Fialko said.
The Apprendi decision has resulted in a spate of appeals in state and federal courts across the country.
Defendants are using the ruling to challenge drug laws that allow judges to decide the amounts illegal drugs sold, fraud convictions in which judges determined amounts lost and gun cases similar to Guice’s.
© 2000 Associated Press.