State v. Keene

[¶ 1] The question before us is this: Is a defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury, as articulated by the United States Supreme Court in Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466, 120 S.Ct. 2348, 147 L.Ed.2d 435 (2000), and its progeny, violated by the imposition of consecutive sentences for separate crimes, resulting from judicial rather than jury fact-finding? We conclude that no constitutional violation occurs as long as the sentence for each individual crime does not exceed the statutory maximum imposed by the Legislature for that crime, even when the aggregate sentence exceeds the…