Is due process satisfied by a "minimal indicia of reliability" standard for key sentencing evidence and determinations?

The question in the title of this post is prompted by an opinion issued earlier this year by the Supreme Court of Delaware in Smack v. Delaware, No. 601 (Del. Oct. 11, 2017) (available here). The first paragraph of the Smack opinion provides the basic facts and procedural issue:

Adrin Smack pleaded guilty to four counts of drug dealing, one count of possession of a firearm by a person prohibited, and one count of conspiracy second degree.  At sentencing, the State claimed that Smack acted as a “kingpin” in a drug operation and should be sentenced to the fifteen years recommended by the State instead of the eight years recommended by the defendant.  Smack requested an evidentiary hearing as part of sentencing, and argued that the State must prove his status as a drug “kingpin” by a preponderance of the evidence.  The Superior Court denied Smack’s request for an evidentiary hearing and ruled it could consider evidence offered by the State at sentencing if it met a “minimal indicia of reliability” standard. The court sentenced Smack to an aggregate of fourteen years at Level V followed by probation. Smack appeals and argues the Superior Court violated his due process rights by denying him an evidentiary hearing and applying the wrong burden of proof at sentencing.  According to Smack, the State was required to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that Smack was a drug kingpin.  Because this Court has previously upheld the use of a minimal indicia of reliability standard to consider evidence offered at a sentencing hearing, and due process does not require an evidentiary hearing, we affirm the Superior Court’s decision.

Here is the heart of the Delaware Supreme Court's analysis of the issue and rejection of the defense's contentions (with footnotes removed):

First, this Court settled the evidentiary standard in Mayes v. State, holding that “in reviewing a sentence within statutory limits, this Court will not find error of law or abuse of discretion unless it is clear from the record below that a sentence has been imposed on the basis of demonstrably false information or information lacking a minimal indicium of reliability.”  Smack argues Mayes does not apply because the standard was not contested.  But the fact the standard was not at issue is irrelevant — the Court explicitly stated the sentencing judge “comported with due process by relying on information meeting the ‘minimal indicium of reliability beyond mere allegation’ standard.”  Subsequent cases rely on Mayes in applying this standard.

Smack relies on a series of federal cases where the court applied a preponderance of the evidence standard to establish facts warranting a sentence enhancement under the federal sentencing guidelines.  According to Smack, the same burden of proof should apply to the State when it argued for a harsher sentence based on Smack’s status as a drug kingpin.  The federal cases, however, are inapposite.  Under the federal sentencing guidelines, the judge must find facts at sentencing using evidentiary burdens because those factual determinations can cause an increase in the sentencing ranges under the guidelines.  Here, Smack’s guilty plea resulted in a sentencing range of two to seventy-six years. To fix the sentence within that statutory range, the judge was entitled to consider all facts that had a minimal indicia of reliability — including the intercepted text messages and phone conversations that led to the seventy-seven charges of drug dealing brought against Smack.  The court could and did find from these facts that Smack was more than a street-level drug dealer.

As hard-core sentencing fans know, the Supreme Court three decades ago in McMillan v. Pennsylvania, rejected a challenge to a Pennsylvania statute's use of a preponderance-of-the-evidence standard in the application of a mandatory minimum sentencing statute.  Chief Justice Rehnquist in that opinion explained why the Court had "little difficulty concluding that ... the preponderance standard satisfies due process."  Of course, aspects of McMillan were overturned in Alleyne v. US with respect to any fact-finding that formally alters any legal limit of a judge's sentencing discretion, but that decision itself stressed it was not contradicting "the broad discretion of judges to select a sentence within the range authorized by law."  

Through communications with the attorney representing in the defendant in this case, I have learned that a cert petition is in the works.  Given the remarkable reality that we have gone nearly 230 years into our constitutional history without having come close to settling just what due process means at sentencing, I think it would be great (and long overdue) for SCOTUS to take up a case like this.