Federal and state news in Indiana

Marcia Oddi over at the Indiana Law Blog has this interesting post about Blakely rulings and Blakely influenced outcomes in the Indiana federal courts.

And some of my other Hoosier friends have sent me today an interesting decision from a state court of appeals, Carson v. State, No. 49A04-0310-CR-494 (Ind. Ct. App. June 11, 2004), coming from a petition for rehearing. Here are the highlights from a short opinion which can be downloaded below:

Now Carson asks this Court to find—pursuant to the recently-decided Blakely v. Washington, 124 S. Ct. 2531 (2004)—that his sentence violates his Sixth Amendment right to have the facts supporting the enhancement of his sentence tried to a jury. Given that Carson did not challenge his sentence on direct appeal, he has technically waived review of this issue, and the appropriate procedure would have been to challenge his sentence through post-conviction relief. Waiver notwithstanding, after considering the merits of Carson’s challenge, we find that Blakely has no effect on his enhanced sentence….

Indiana courts have not yet considered what effect, if any, the Blakely opinion may have on Indiana’s sentencing scheme. Carson urges us to find that his enhanced sentence is improper because the trial court “made factual findings and entered an enhanced sentence upon those findings” without requiring that a jury make those findings beyond a reasonable doubt. Those factual findings—or aggravating circumstances—consisted of the following: a history of criminal and delinquent activity, which includes multiple convictions; a need for corrective or rehabilitative treatment that can best be provided by incarceration in a penal institution or in a work release facility; and the strong likelihood that, based upon his criminal history, he will commit battery again. As to the first aggravator, the multiple convictions that the extensive criminal history comprises have already been proven beyond a reasonable doubt and are thus exempt from the Apprendi rule as clarified by Blakely. The other two aggravating circumstances are simply derivative of that extensive history of convictions and thus would seem also not to implicate the Blakely analysis. In any event, a single aggravating circumstance is adequate to justify a sentence enhancement. Therefore, even if our supreme court were to find that Indiana’s sentencing scheme runs afoul of the Sixth Amendment for the reasons articulated in Blakely, this finding would have no effect on Carson’s sentence.
Download carson_v. State.doc