United States, Petitioner v. Andre Ralph Haymond

Summary

A plurality of the Court, with Justice Breyer concurring in the judgment, held that applying 18 U.S.C. § 3583(k)'s mandatory minimum five-year prison term—triggered solely by a judge's preponderance-standard finding, without a jury, that a supervisee committed specified offenses—violated the Fifth and Sixth Amendments, because any fact that triggers a new mandatory minimum must be found by a jury beyond a reasonable doubt under the Apprendi–Alleyne line. The Court rejected the government's contentions that revocation is a postjudgment sentence-administration proceeding outside the Sixth Amendment, that the jury's verdict already authorized the added punishment, and that § 3583(k) resembles historic parole and probation revocation. Declining to choose between competing remedies, it vacated the Tenth Circuit's judgment and remanded for consideration of whether juries could be empaneled to find the triggering facts. Justice Alito, joined by The Chief Justice and Justices Thomas and Kavanaugh, dissented, arguing that revocation proceedings are not part of any criminal prosecution and that the plurality's reasoning threatens the entire supervised-release system.