# Washington v. Recuenco

> Supreme Court of the United States · June 26, 2006 · 548 U.S. 212

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9434901

## Case

- **Full name:** Washington v. Recuenco
- **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States
- **Decided:** June 26, 2006
- **Citations:** 548 U.S. 212; 126 S. Ct. 2546; 165 L. Ed. 2d 466; 2006 U.S. LEXIS 5164
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Kennedy
- **Judges:** Thomas, Kennedy, Stevens
- **Cited by:** 1,000 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9434901

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- holding that although trial court’s firearm-specific sentence enhancement, based only on the jury’s finding that respondent was armed with a “deadly weapon," was erroneous under Ap-prendí and Blakely, error would be harmless if it was determined on remand that, had the sentenc…
- holding that error involving Blakely v. Washington, 542 U.S. at 303-04, 124 S.Ct. 2531, and the failure to submit a sentencing factor to a jury, like the failure to submit an element on an offense to the jury, is not structural error and is therefore subject to harmless error …
- concluding that when the court not only fails to submit an element to the jury, but also “mistakenly conclude[s] that the jury’s verdict was a complete verdict of guilt on the charges and imposed sentence accordingly!,]” the error was subject to harmless error analysis
- concluding that harmless error may apply where sentencing court determined that "firearm" enhancement applied, although jury found defendant had used a "deadly weapon," rather than a "firearm"
- explaining that the trial court’s failure to instruct the jury on an element of the offense is subject to harmless error analysis and that we must “ask[ ] whether the jury would have returned the same verdict absent the error”

## Opinion text

Justice Kennedy,
concurring.
The opinions for the Court in Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U. S. 466 (2000), Blakely v. Washington, 542 U. S. 296 (2004), and their progeny were accompanied by dissents. The Court does not revisit these cases today, and it describes their holdings accurately. On these premises, the Court’s analysis is correct. Cf. Ring v. Arizona, 536 U. S. 584, 613 (2002) (Kennedy, J., concurring). With these observations I join the Court’s opinion.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9434901. Public record. Not legal advice.