Word: v
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Supreme Court is well aware that enhancing sentences this way can be unfair, and the justices have struggled with it since 2000. That's when the court ruled 5-4 in Apprendi v. New Jersey that a New Jersey man's 10-year sentence (the maximum under state law) for shooting at a black neighbor's house could not be increased by two years just because the judge believed the crime was racially motivated. Unless the facts leading to the sentence are determined by a jury (or admitted to in a guilty plea), the court said, a judge required...
...Supreme Court returned to the issue four years later in Blakely v. Washington. This time, the justices decided, also by a 5-4 vote, that Washington state's sentencing rules violated a kidnapper's Sixth Amendment right. Since the judge determined that the kidnapper had acted with "deliberate cruelty," the rules allowed the judge to add 37 months to the 53-month sentence. Even though 53 months was far below the "statutory maximum" of 10 years, the sentence was still unconstitutional, a conclusion that suggested the federal guidelines, which operated in a similar way, were in jeopardy...
...because he felt Jedis do not seek revenge. Fans frantically clicked their digital cameras at a display case that showed the evolution of Darth Vader's costume - for this crowd, the nasty Sith lord's chest plate changing from green buttons to blue ones in between Episodes IV and V is as significant as Picasso changing from his blue period to his rose period. Those in touch with their dark sides rushed exhibits of tortured druids on a rack, Luke Skywalker's severed head and the Princess Leia slave costume, a fetching metal bikini that says, "Eat your heart...
...G.O.P. race features real differences among the candidates on important and salient issues. Giuliani is pro-choice-and apparently pro-Roe v. Wade-in a pro-life, anti-Roe party. McCain is for something like amnesty for illegal immigrants in a party that is not. There's lots of room for Romney to move up, which he is now doing (he leads in a new Iowa poll), and for Thompson to get in (which he intends to do next month). Romney or Thompson will then battle to become the conservative alternative. It's quite possible that the winner of that...
...personally disagreed with the venue for the event because Primal Scream is supposed to be light-hearted” said rally participant Ffyona V. Patel ’07, who was concerned that “the majority of the people [would] be drunk and...just want to laugh or stare...