Lots of Blakely action in Colorado

As detailed in the second half of this list of announcements, yesterday the Colorado Supreme Court granted cert on six different cases raising Blakely issues of various sorts.  Back in May, the Colorado Supreme Court in Lopez issued long and thoughtful opinion applying Blakely to Colorado’s presumptive sentencing scheme (basics here, commentary hereLopez in a number of other cases.

Interestingly, one of the cert grants comes in the case of People v. Johnsondiscussed here, in Johnson an intermediate Colorado appellate court held “that Blakely applies retroactively to the date that Apprendi established its new rule.”  Here’s how the Colorado Supreme Court frames its cert grant in this Johnson case:

Whether the court of appeals erred in holding that Blakely v. Washington, 542 U.S. 126 (2004) is retroactive to the date Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466 (2000) was announced.

Because the Colorado Supreme Court did such fine work in Lopez, I will be very interested to see how it handles all these Blakely issues and especially the retroactivity issue.  The Court merits credit for taking on all these important follow-up Blakely issues; perhaps it might inspire SCOTUS to follow suit.