Supreme Court of the United States - Press Release
Supreme Court of the United States: Hurst v. Florida ruling
Cite as: 577 U. S. (2016) 9
Opinion of the Court
We now expressly overrule Spaziano and Hildwin in relevant part.
Spaziano and Hildwin summarized earlier precedent to conclude that “the Sixth Amendment does not require that the specific findings authorizing the imposition of the sentence of death be made by the jury.” Hildwin, 490
U. S., at 640–641. Their conclusion was wrong, and irreconcilable with Apprendi. Indeed, today is not the first time we have recognized as much. In Ring, we held that another pre-Apprendi decision — Walton, 497 U. S. 639 — could not “survive the reasoning of Apprendi.” 536 U. S., at 603. Walton, for its part, was a mere application of Hildwin’s holding to Arizona’s capital sentencing scheme. 497 U. S., at 648.
“Although ‘ “the doctrine of stare decisis is of fundamental importance to the rule of law[,]” . . . [o]ur precedents are not sacrosanct.’ . . . ‘[W]e have overruled prior decisions where the necessity and propriety of doing so has been established.’” Ring, 536 U. S., at 608 (quoting Patterson v. McLean Credit Union, 491 U. S. 164, 172 (1989)). And in the Apprendi context, we have found that “stare decisis does not compel adherence to a decision whose ‘underpinnings’ have been ‘eroded’ by subsequent developments of constitutional law.” Alleyne, 570 U. S., at (SOTOMAYOR, J., concurring) (slip op., at 2); see also United States v. Gaudin, 515 U. S. 506, 519–520 (1995) (overruling Sinclair v. United States, 279 U. S. 263 (1929)); Ring, 536 U. S., at 609 (overruling Walton, 497 U. S., at 639); Alleyne, 570 U. S., at (slip op., at 15) (overruling Harris v. United States, 536 U. S. 545 (2002)).
Time and subsequent cases have washed away the logic of Spaziano and Hildwin. The decisions are overruled to the extent they allow a sentencing judge to find an aggravating circumstance, independent of a jury’s factfinding, that is necessary for imposition of the death penalty.
