Happy Birthday, Blakely!

A year ago today, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Blakely v. Washington.  In my post after first seeing the decision, I commented that "the ramifications of this decision for modern sentencing reforms cannot be overstated," and that there will "be lots and lots more litigation (some of which will surely make its way again to the Supreme Court) about what [Blakely] now means for the operation of structured sentencing systems."  An on-line search this morning provides support for these predictions: running the search "(Blakely or Booker) & sentenc!" after June 24, 2004 in Westlaw's allcases database now produces 5511 "hits" (with 2270 from allstates and 3244 from allfeds).  The same search in Lexis gets interrupted "because it will return more than 3000 results."

So, on its birthday, what do you get for Blakely, the sentencing case that has everything?  Perhaps a debate in the comments about whether the sentencing world is better or worse a year after Blakely.  I vote better in part because Blakely (and Booker) have helped stimulate a long overdue national discussion of sentencing law and policy.  But I would like to hear other perspectives.