SCOTUS Ice ruling undercuts Ohio defendant's habeas claim

The Sixth Circuit issued an intriguing little habeas ruling today in Evans v. Hudson, No. 08-3717 (6th Cir. Aug. 3, 2009) (available here).  Here is how it starts:

Respondent-Appellant Stuart Hudson (“Hudson”), the warden of Mansfield Correctional Institution, appeals the district court’s grant of a conditional writ of habeas corpus to Petitioner-Appellee Glen Evans (“Evans”), requiring the state of Ohio to resentence Evans within 90 days or release him. Hudson contends that the district court erred in concluding that Evans received ineffective assistance of appellate counsel because appellate counsel failed to raise, during Evans’s direct appeal, a claim under Blakely v. Washington, 542 U.S. 296 (2004), regarding Evans’s sentence to consecutive terms of imprisonment. For the reasons discussed below involving the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Oregon v. Ice, — U.S. —, 129 S. Ct. 711 (2009), we REVERSE the district court’s grant of habeas relief.