State of Arizona, Appellee v. Robert Allen Henderson, Appellant

Summary

The Arizona Supreme Court held that a Blakely claim not preserved by objection at trial must be reviewed for fundamental error rather than harmless error, placing on the defendant the burden of showing both that fundamental error occurred and that it caused prejudice. Applying that standard, the court found fundamental error because a judge rather than a jury found the aggravators supporting a super-aggravated sentence (violating the Sixth Amendment) and applied a preponderance standard rather than proof beyond a reasonable doubt (violating the Fifth Amendment), and found prejudice because the jury's refusal to convict Henderson of kidnapping implied a reasonable jury could have rejected the serious-injury and victim-harm aggravators, leaving only the undisputed victim-age aggravator—one short of the two substantial aggravators A.R.S. § 13-702.01 requires. The court affirmed the conviction, vacated the court of appeals opinion in part, and declined to remand because Henderson had completed his sentence and supervision. Justice Hurwitz concurred separately, writing that on a clean slate he would treat all Apprendi error as structural but joined the majority out of deference to Ring III, while observing that the new fundamental-error prejudice test is practically identical to Ring III's harmless-error test except for burden allocation.