Another way to be punished without conviction

The Blakely ruling at its core seems sound to me because it will generally prevent persons from being punished for crimes for which they were not convicted (which is a not-uncommon practice under the existing federal guidelines).   But this interesting article from Utah shows that, even after Blakely, there are still some ways persons can be punished for unconvicted conduct.

The article reports on a decision by the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole to keep a man in jail for armed robbery after DNA evidence linked him to a series of rapes:

Some legal observers say the case of Rudy Michael Romero, 40, sets a dangerous precedent, because Romero is effectively being held in prison on an indeterminate sentence for crimes for which he was never convicted. 

Romero was sentenced to five years to life for aggravated robbery, and was scheduled to be paroled July 27 after serving 10 years of his sentence.  But the parole board rescinded the date after learning June 22 he had been implicated in five rapes committed in the early 1990s after the crime lab matched his DNA with preserved evidence.

Romero has no known sexual-assault convictions and wasn’t implicated in the cases until the state crime lab began to take saliva samples from prison convicts to match against DNA evidence in unsolved crimes. However, Romero cannot be tried for the Jordan River rapes because the four-year-statute of limitations has expired.

The article also notes that “according to state law, the board’s decisions are absolute and cannot be appealed.”  However, in a post-Blakely world, it will be interesting to see if courts might be more willing to intervene in a decision of this sort than in the past.