The 7th Circuit speaks on retroactivity!!

With thanks to readers, I now have news that the Seventh Circuit has spoken directly to the issue of Booker‘s retroactivity in McReynolds v. US, 04-2520 (7th Cir. Feb. 2, 2005) (available here), and many prisoners are not going to like the news.  In an opinion authored by Judge Easterbrook, the Seventh Circuit says Booker is not to be applied retroactively to cases which became final (meaning all direct appeals were concluded) before January 12, 2005.  Here’s some of the key language:

Although the Supreme Court did not address the retroactivity question in Booker, its decision in Schriro v. Summerlin, 124 S. Ct. 2519 (2004), is all but conclusive on the point.  Summerlin held that Ring v. Arizona, 536 U.S. 584 (2002) — which, like Booker, applied Apprendi’s principles to a particular subject — is not retroactive on collateral review….

We held in Curtis v. United States, 294 F.3d 841, 843 (7th Cir. 2002), that Apprendi does not apply retroactively on collateral review, because it “is concerned with the identity of the decisionmaker, and the quantum of evidence required for a sentence, rather than with what primary conduct is unlawful”. That, too, is equally true of Booker. No conduct that was forbidden before Booker is permitted today; no maximum available sentence has been reduced….

The remedial portion of Booker drives the point home…. District judges must continue to follow their approach as guidelines, with appellate review to determine whether that task has been carried out reasonably. No primary conduct has been made lawful, and none of the many factors that affect sentences under the Sentencing Guidelines has been declared invalid….

What is more, Booker does not in the end move any decision from judge to jury, or change the burden of persuasion.  The remedial portion of Booker held that decisions about sentencing factors will continue to be made by judges, on the preponderance of the evidence, an approach that comports with the sixth amendment so long as the guideline system has some flexibility in application.  As a practical matter, then, petitioners’ sentences would be determined in the same way if they were sentenced today; the only change would be the degree of flexibility judges would enjoy in applying the guideline system. That is not a “watershed” change that fundamentally improves the accuracy of the criminal process.

We conclude, then, that Booker does not apply retroactively to criminal cases that became final before its release on January 12, 2005.  That date, rather than June 24, 2004, on which Blakely v. Washington, 124 S. Ct. 2531 (2004), came down, is the appropriate dividing line; Blakely reserved decision about the status of the federal Sentencing Guidelines, so Booker itself represents the establishment of a new rule about the federal system.