Deciphering Blakely for the states

The coming week -- with the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Blakely scheduled for Tuesday and additional federal court rulings sure to come and come fast -- will likely focus much attention on what Blakely means for federal sentencing. But what Blakely means for state sentencing systems is no less important (more than 90% of all criminal convictions are in state courts) and no less dynamic (state sentencing structures are interestingly diverse and will be impacted by Blakely in interestingly diverse ways).

Fortunately, we can be confident that there are a lot of fantastic projects and minds working on the state story. For example, the great folks at the Vera Institute of Justice's State Sentencing and Corrections Program have launched an initiative to assist state officials who are grappling with Blakely and its aftermath. As reported to me in an e-mail and detailed on its website:

SSC has already begun to provide advice, research, and other assistance to officials in states that are affected by the ruling. Later this summer, Vera will convene a major national meeting, providing a necessary forum for state officials to strategize together and learn from national experts in the sentencing field. Vera will also issue a series of publications designed to provide the information and resources policy makers need to craft short- and long-term response to Blakely.

In addition, I have heard that the great folks at Justice Strategies are also hard at work helping states make sense of Blakely. Justice Strategies has recently worked in conjunction with Families Against Mandatory Minimums on two great recent (pre-Blakely) reports about state sentencing developments -- a report about Arizona's sentencing laws avaliable here and a report about nationwide state sentencing developments available here. Both of these documents, and really everything produced by FAMM and Vera's SSC, should be required reading for everyone involved in sentencing reform.