United States v. Cotton - Opinion Announcement

Argument of Chief Justice Rehnquist

Mr. Rehnquist: I have the opinions of the Court to announce in two cases.

The first one is No. 01-687 United States against Cotton.

Respondents led a vast drug conspiracy in Baltimore.

A federal grand jury indicted them charging them with conspiracy to possess and to possess with intent to distribute crack cocaine.

The indictments did not specify the amount of crack cocaine involved in the conspiracy.

The jury found respondents guilty of the crime charged.

Consistent with the practice in Federal Courts at the time, the District Court made a finding of drug quantity at sentencing.

The Court found one respondent responsible for at least 500 grams of cocaine; other respondent was responsible for at least 1.5 Kilograms of crack cocaine.

For crimes involving 50 grams or more of crack cocaine, Congress authorized a penalty of up to life imprisonment.

Accordingly, the District Court sentenced two of the respondents to 30 years imprisonment and the remaining respondents to life.

Without a finding of drug quantity, the maximum punishment is 20 years imprisonment.

Respondents did not object in the District Court to the fact that they were sentenced based on a finding of drug quantity not alleged in the indictment.

While respondent's appeal was pending in the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, we decided Apprendi versus New Jersey in the Spring of 2000.

Under Apprendi, any fact that increases the penalty for a crime beyond the prescribed statutory maximum must be submitted to a petty jury, and in federal prosecutions must be alleged in the indictment.

Respondents then argued in the Court of Appeals that their sentence was error under Apprendi.

The Court of Appeals recognized that respondents did not raise this argument in the District Court but nonetheless, vacated respondents’ sentences on the ground that the omission of drug quantity from the indictment was a jurisdictional error.

In an opinion filed with the Clerk today, we reverse.

The notion that this type of error is jurisdictional is derived from our 1887 decision in Ex parte Bain which stated that a defective indictment deprives a trial court of jurisdiction.

Bain, however, was decided in an error in which the Court’s authority to review criminal convictions was greatly circumscribed.

Direct review of criminal convictions in this Court was not available and the Court could grant a petition for writ of habeas only to correct jurisdictional errors.

The Court does stretch the concept of jurisdiction so that it could correct obvious constitutional errors.

Our later cases however, have rejected the idea that Indictment defects affect the court’s power to hear a case.

To remove any doubt today, we overrule Bain in so far as it held that a defective indictment deprives the court of jurisdiction.

We thus apply ordinary plain error analysis to respondents’ claim since it was not raised in the Trial Court.

Federal Courts will recognize an error, not raised in the District Court only if the error affects the fairness, integrity, and public reputation of judicial proceedings.

Respondents do not satisfy this standard.

The fairness, integrity, and public reputation of the judicial system depends on meeting out to those inflicting the greatest harm on society the most severe punishments.

The real threat then to the fairness, integrity, and public reputation of judicial proceedings would be of respondents despite the overwhelming and uncontroverted evidence that they were involved in a vast drug conspiracy were to receive a sentence prescribed for those committing less substantial offenses because of an error that was never objected to in the Trial Court.

The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed.

The decision of the court is unanimous.