Cunningham v. California

California’s determinate sentencing law (DSL) assigns to the trial judge, not . to the jury, authority to find the facts that expose a defendant to an elevated “upper term” sentence. The facts so found are neither inherent in the jury’s verdict nor embraced by the defendant’s plea, and they need only be established by a preponderance of the evidence, not beyond a reasonable doubt. The question presented is whether the DSL, by placing sentence-elevating factfinding within the judge’s province, violates a defendant’s right to trial by jury safeguarded by the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments. We…