Did it violate the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments for the increase in the range of potential punishment to be based on findings made by a judge under a probable cause standard rather than by a jury under a reasonable doubt standard?

QUESTION PRESENTED The defendant in this case was sixteen when the alleged crime was committed. He was initially charged in Juvenile Court. He was transferred from Juvenile Court to Criminal Court after a transfer hearing where the Juvenile Court judge found three statutory factors, including that the defendant was involved in a crime and that the public interest favored transfer to adult court, to have been proven under a probable cause standard. As a result of that transfer ruling by the Juvenile Court, the defendant’s maximum possible punishment for a charge of murder increased from punishment for two-and-a-half years (until he turned nineteen and juvenile jurisdiction expired) to punishment up to and including life imprisonment. The question presented is: Did it violate the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments, as construed in Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466 (2000), and its progeny, for this increase in the range of potential punishment to be based on findings made by a judge under a probable cause standard rather than by a jury under a reasonable doubt standard? ii