Texas-sized Blakely analysis

In a wonderful and thorough analysis of issues that now confront the Supreme Court in Booker and Fanfan, US District Judge Kathleen Cardone of the Western District of Texas does not let the Fifth Circuit's ruling in US v. Peneiro, 377 F.3d 464 (5th Cir. 2004), keep her from opining on the true meaning of Blakely for federal sentencing law. In US v. Chapparro, 2004 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 17531 (W.D. Tex. Sept. 1, 2004), Judge Cardone recognizes that "Pineiro is undisputedly the law of this Circuit," but then offers a stunningly detailed exegesis and analysis of Blakely issues "in the event the Court of Appeals elects to reconsider its holding in Pineiro."

Though a very long opinion, Chapparro is worth a thorough and full read because it first thoughtfully discusses "the structure and application of the Guidelines [and] relevant Supreme Court precedent leading up to the Blakely decision," and then turns to "a structural comparison between the federal guidelines and the guidelines before the Court in Blakely [in order to] address the significance, if any, of the fact that the federal guidelines are promulgated by an independent agency whereas the guidelines before the Court in Blakely are promulgated by a legislature."

Because Judge Cardone's analysis is so rich, I cannot do it justice with a brief summary. But these key passages I think capture the most important highlights:

Given the past characterization of the Guidelines as binding on judges rather than suggestive, it is difficult to ascertain a principled reason by which an agency delegated lawmaking authority restrained only by a Congressional right of refusal would be permitted to effect the substantive rights of defendants without offending the Constitution while Congressional action of the exact same nature would offend the Constitution. Such an interpretation reduces the right to jury trial to a "mere procedural formality," Blakely, 124 S. Ct. at 2538, in which the essential question becomes not the right itself but rather the source of the procedure. The right to jury trial could be vitiated by simply transferring lawmaking authority to an agency....

[I]t would therefore take a legal fiction of the highest order embracing the proposition that the existing Guidelines, which bind a sentencing court to procedures on peril of reversal, are no more than a court rule guiding a judge through sentencing and therefore constitute a form of agreement with the Commission by which discretion is ceded in exchange for predictability. Only such a fabrication would explain why an offender has rights under statutory guidelines and lacks the same rights under a regulatory guideline.