Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> Sentencing Law and Policy

Criminal Law

: Sentencing Law and Policy

"Mandatory Sentencing Guidelines by Any Other Name: When 'Indeterminate Structured Sentencing' Violates Blakely v. Washington"

By Douglas A. Berman

The title of this post is the title of this new article available via SSRN by Bradley Hall.  Here is the abstract: While striking down Washington's mandatory sentencing guidelines scheme in Blakely v. Washington, the Supreme Court made clear that '[w]hen a judge inflicts punishment that the jury?s verdict alone does not allow, the jury has not found all the facts ?which the law makes essential to the punishment . . .? and the judge exceeds his proper authority.'  Conversely, the Court approved of sentencing schemes that do not employ mandatory sentencing guidelines based on judicial fact-finding, but instead vest judges with full sentencing authority at the moment of conviction, i.e., schemes in which judge-found facts are not 'essential to the punishment...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on July 30, 2009 (boomark / email).