State v. Rudy B.

Juvenile Law Center filed an amicus brief in the New Mexico Court of Appeals in support of Rudy B., a youth who was sentenced by a juvenile court judge to 25 years in adult prison following an amenability hearing. The New Mexico statute at issue allowed the judge to sentence certain youth as adults if the court found them not amenable to rehabilitative treatment in the juvenile system.

Relying on Apprendi v. New Jersey, Juvenile Law Center's brief argued that the New Mexico statute deprives juveniles of their right to a jury trial and is therefore unconstitutional under the Sixth Amendment to the US Constitution. Under Supreme Court case law, a defendant is entitled to a jury trial for any fact – other than the existence of a prior conviction – that might increase his or her sentence beyond the statutory maximum.

Juvenile Law Center argued that because the sentences were so dramatically different in juvenile and adult court, and because the adult sentence could not be imposed without additional fact-finding, the statutory maximum was the maximum sentence Rudy B. could have received in the juvenile system.

The New Mexico Court of Appeals agreed with Juvenile Law Center and found the statute in question unconstitutional; New Mexico appealed. 

The Supreme Court of New Mexico reversed the Court of Appeals. Relying on the US Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Oregon v. Ice, the Court held that the sentencing scheme in question was constitutional because the jury historically played no role in sentencing a child as an adult and because principles of federalism precluded the application of Apprendi to the amenability determination.

In dissent, Justice Chavez noted that “the Framers of the Bill of Rights would be alarmed to learn that a child can be condemned to an adult prison for up to a life sentence without at least the same constitutional protections afforded adults.”  The dissent concluded, “[t]o deprive a child of the same jury protections afforded an adult is not equal justice.”