Good morning, Blakely

Everything Blakely calms down a bit for the weekend (thank goodness!), but there are still interesting tidbits of information from some newspaper articles discussing recent activities in the Sixth and Eighth Circuits. For example, this article describes DOJ's decision to agree to the sentence reduction sought by Tiffany Harris Montgomery, which in turn led her attorney to seek to drop her appeal in the Sixth Circuit. Still unclear is whether the Sixth Circuit is still seeking to expedite consideration of another Blakely case, since in the words of Gregory Van Tatenhove, US Attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky, "we're back to square one in the 6th Circuit."

Perhaps even more consequential news comes from this article which, though primarily about the Eighth Circuit's Mooney decision, notes a potentially important district court ruling (and one that I had not yet heard about). The article reports:

Earlier this week in St. Louis, U.S. District Judge Jean Hamilton applied the Blakely ruling.... Hamilton sentenced drug dealer Keith Mosley to 87 months in prison instead of following guidelines that called for a term of 151 to 188 months based on past convictions that prosecutors said made him a career offender. The defense complained that no jury had made such a determination.

Though I am hesitant to put too much stock in a newspaper report of a case holding — especially when the report is in an article that elsewhere mis-names Judge Diana Murphy "Linda" — this ruling by Judge Hamilton could be quite significant if she ruled that there were "Blakely factors" implicated by certain criminal history determinations.

Meanwhile, this article from the ABA Journal got me wondering whether the Blakely decision could have been clearer if SCOTUS had the assistance of 10 additional justices. As Arsenio Hall used to say, "Things That Make You Go Hmmm..."