Blakely news from Oregon

Just after complaining about slowed media coverage of Blakely earlier today, out comes this terrifically informative article in today’s The Oregonian appropriately titled “Confusion reigns in federal, state courts.”

The article does not break a lot of new ground in covering the federal sentencing story — though it does note that some local federal prosecutors “are reindicting some defendants in cases in which they plan to ask for longer sentences” and “have asked for juries to be impaneled to decide the sentencing in three cases.” Most eye-opening, however, are these passages covering what Blakely means for state sentencing in Oregon:

In state court, Salem defense lawyer Jesse Barton, who has written manuals about the state sentencing system, said the implications for Oregon are “absolutely enormous.” He said Blakely particularly affects cases in which judges determine during sentencing that the facts in a case make a defendant a “dangerous offender” — a classification that comes with a longer sentence.

It also could affect cases in which a person is convicted of multiple crimes and the judge, based on the facts in the case, hands down sentences that run consecutively instead of concurrently. Barton said he is already handling a half-dozen appeals for inmates convicted in state court. In those cases, judges added time to sentences based on the circumstances of their crimes. “There are hundreds of guys in prison right now doing unconstitutional sentences under Blakely — hundreds, maybe thousands,” Barton said.

Although Blakely is not likely to have a significant impact on the most serious crimes, such as the violent person-to-person offenses that fall under Measure 11, state prosecutors said it may impact the way serious property crimes are handled.