Court report: states lose a few in this term's U.S. Supreme Court decisions.

• Author: Savage, David G.

Lawmakers in many states may soon need to take a close look at how criminals are sentenced in their state courts, thanks to a recent Supreme Court ruling that has upset the traditional rules for crime and punishment.

Until this year, the general rule has been that juries decide whether a defendant is guilty of crime, and, if so, the judge imposes a punishment. But the Supreme Court insists that the Constitution requires that juries, not judges acting alone, must decide all the facts that justify a long prison term.

"The founders of the American Republic were not prepared to leave it to the state" to decide who is guilty and what punishment is deserved, wrote Justice Antonin Scalia in the first of a series of rulings that strengthened the right to jury trials. "Judges, it is sometimes necessary to remind ourselves, are part of the state," he added.

Scalia has been the leader of an unusual five-member liberal-conservative coalition that has struck down stiff sentences imposed by judges. Four years ago, in the case of Apprendi v. New Jersey, the high court threw out part of a 12-year prison term that a judge had imposed on a middle-aged white man who, after drinking heavily, shot a bullet at the home of an African American neighbor.

The defendant, Charles Apprendi, pled guilty to an assault, which carried a maximum term of 10 years in prison. However, he was given extra time behind bars because the judge decided his offense amounted to a hate crime.

In reversing Apprendi's sentences, the justices announced a strict, new rule: "Other than the fact of a prior conviction, any fact that increases the penalty for a crime beyond the prescribed statutory maximum must be submitted to a jury, and proved beyond a reasonable doubt."

Until this year, the Apprendi decision was seen as significant, but limited, since the new rule was triggered only when the sentence went beyond "the statutory maximum."

But this limitation seemingly evaporated in June when the high court struck down the sentence given to a Washington state kidnapper. Ralph Blakely had pied guilty to abducting his estranged wife and their son, a felony that carried a maximum of 10 years in prison. The judge had sent him to prison for seven-and-a-half years. Nonetheless, the Supreme Court found this punishment unconstitutional because his sentence exceeded the guidelines that had been set in the state's Sentencing Reform Act.

Washington's Legislature, along with at least 10 other states and...