Will Judge Sotomayor make SCOTUS less friendly to criminal defendants?

The question of this post is prompted by the this new article from the Wall Street Journal, which is headlined "Nominee's Criminal Rulings Tilt to Right of Souter."  Here are excerpts:

While Judge Sonia Sotomayor stands in the liberal mainstream on many issues, her record suggests that the Supreme Court nominee could sometimes rule with the top court's conservatives on questions of criminal justice. 

She "has contributed greatly to law enforcement in New York" as a judge, said Leroy Frazer Jr., first assistant district attorney in Manhattan and a former colleague of Judge Sotomayor.  After Yale Law School, Judge Sotomayor joined the Manhattan district attorney's office. She spent five years at the office, and handled high-profile murder and child-pornography cases.  New York criminal-defense lawyers say she is surprisingly tough on crime for a Democratic-backed appointee -- a byproduct, they believe, of her tenure as a prosecutor.

"The reputation of Sotomayor was that sentencing was not an easy ride," says Gerald Shargel, a criminal-defense attorney. In a 1997 trial, Mr. Shargel asked Judge Sotomayor to show leniency in sentencing William Duker, a prominent New York lawyer who had pleaded guilty to overbilling the government.  Mr. Shargel wanted Mr. Duker to be sent to an alcohol treatment program, in lieu of prison. The judge, however, sentenced the attorney to 33 months in prison, in line with the federal sentencing guidelines.

Following recent Supreme Court precedent, Judge Sotomayor tends to see relatively few grounds to overturn criminal convictions, says John Siffert, a New York attorney who taught an appellate advocacy class with the judge at New York University School of Law from 1996 to 2006.  On the trial bench, he says, "she was not viewed as a pro-defense judge."

To be sure, Judge Sotomayor has at times shown leniency toward criminal defendants. In 2001, after she had become an appellate-court judge, she agreed to preside over the drug-conspiracy trial of Sandra Carter.  The jury convicted Ms. Carter, but Judge Sotomayor sentenced her to six months in prison, far below the term that she could have drawn under the sentencing guidelines, says Edward O'Callaghan, the prosecutor in the case.  Judge Sotomayor, he says, took into account the fact that the defendant was a first-time offender who made far less money than other conspiracy participants.

Michael Bachner, a New York defense lawyer who has handled trials and appeals before Judge Sotomayor, senses a divide in her criminal jurisprudence. She can be "very tough" on white-collar defendants from privileged backgrounds, but is "more understanding of individuals who grew up in a tougher circumstance."

Prior posts on the SCOTUS nomination and record of Judge Sotomayor:

• Some very early, very brief sentencing reflections on Judge Sotomayor
• A quick thought on Judge Sotomayor's sentencing work in Cavera
• Noting early unpublished sentencing opinions from Judge Sotomayor
• Judge Sotomayor on textualism and voting rights in Hayden v. Pataki
• President Obama to nominate Judge Sonia Sotomayor for Supreme Court
• Notable background parallels between Judge Sotomayor and Justice Alito
• Any predictions on how a Justice Sotomayor would approach capital cases?
• Examining Judge Sotomayor's years as a New York state prosecutor 
• Examining Judge Sotomayor's criminal justice record