race enhancement. Apprendi appealed, represented by Charles Coant and Joseph O'Neill. The Appellate Division of the New Jersey Superior Court affirmed the enhancement on the grounds that it was a "sentencing factor" rather than an "element" of the crime, and therefore not subject to the jury-trial and proof-beyond-a-reasonable-doubt requirements of the Constitution. The New Jersey Supreme Court agreed with this conclusion, and also affirmed Apprendi's sentence. Apprendi appealed to the Supreme Court. Opinion of the Court Apprendi shifted the landscape with regard to the findings that comprise a criminal sentence. "Other than the fact of a prior conviction, any fact that increases the penalty for a crime beyond the prescribed statutory maximum must be submitted to a jury and proved beyond a reasonable doubt." In this case, the hate-crime enhancement was determined by a judge, sitting alone, and subjected to a lower standard of proof — a preponderance of the evidence, instead of beyond a reasonable doubt. Because of the enhancement, the judge imposed a 12-year sentence, which was 2 years greater than the 10-year sentence otherwise authorized by the findings at the plea hearing. Under the rule the Court formulated, Apprendi's case had to be sent back to the New Jersey courts. Historical basis Oliver Wendell Holmes observed, "The law threatens certain pains if you do certain things, intending thereby to give you a new motive for not doing them. If you persist in doing them, it has to inflict the pains in order that its threats may continue to be believed." Here, New Jersey threatened punishment for infractions against its firearms laws, and additional punishment for violations of its hate-crimes laws. Due process procedural safeguards should apply equally to both of these punishments. Under the Constitution, due process gives criminal defendants two interdependent procedural safeguards with respect to the manner in which the sentence is determined. The first of these is the jury trial, a "guard against a spirit of oppression and tyranny on the part of the rulers" and "the great bulwark of our civil and political liberties," whereby "the truth of every accusation, whether preferred in the shape of indictment, information, or appeal, should afterwards be confirmed by the unanimous suffrage of twelve of the defendant's equals and neighbors." The second is proof beyond a reasonable doubt, the historical "measure of persuasion by which the prosecution must convince the trier of all the essential elements of