Tyrants In Black Robes Watch

The Rehnquist court just keeps kicking ass and taking names; this time, in Blakely v. Washington, the court ruled that the Washington state sentencing guideline regime violated the right to jury trial provisions of the 6th Amendment. How? Because a defendant could accept a plea bargain, only to have a judge pronounce a harsher sentence based on factual findings (on the judge's part) that had never been deliberated on by a jury or admitted to by the defendant.

As a result of this decision, the entire federal court system, at least in the sphere of criminal law, is going to have to be overhauled. Washington state's sentencing guidelines resemble federal guidelines too closely---and if anything, the federal guidelines constitute a greater infringement on 6th Amendment rights---for federal judges not to construe the Blakely ruling as binding on federal sentencing decisions.

This is great news. Under the provisions of the old sentencing regime (which we talked about here), a defendant who had been charged on, say, 10 different counts and decided not to accept a plea, could be in for the worst sort of surprise. If that defendant were acquitted on nine of the counts, and convicted only on the most minor of them, the judge would be empowered (actually, one could argue that the judge would be encouraged) by the sentencing guidelines to make findings of fact that the defendant was essentially guilty of all the charges that the jury failed to convict him on, use those findings as aggravating factors, and sentence the defendant as if he had been convicted on as many counts as the judged deemed appropriate. Sorry if my syntax is a bit convoluted here; the good news, in short, is that Big Brother just took a kick in the balls.