State v. Hilt
Annotate this CaseAfter a jury trial, Defendant was convicted of first-degree premeditated murder, aggravated kidnapping, and aggravated robbery. After the sentencing judge found by a preponderance of the evidence the existence of four aggravating factors, Defendant received a hard fifty life sentence for the first-degree murder conviction. Defendant appealed, raising nine issues challenging his convictions and two challenging his sentences. The Supreme Court (1) affirmed Defendant’s convictions, thus rejecting Defendant’s claims of reversible error; and (2) vacated Defendant’s sentence for first-degree murder, holding that Defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial, as interpreted in Alleyne v. United States, was violated because the judge, rather than the jury, found the four aggravating factors existed and did so on a preponderance-of-the-evidence standard, rather than a beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard.
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