SCOTUS taking up Blakely harmless error issue!

Though I won’t credit all my whining about the need for the Supreme Court to start addressing all the important issues left unresolved by Blakely and Booker (see, e.g., here and here), I will celebrate the big news coming from Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog that the Court today granted cert in “a significant sequel to its series of rulings on the roles of judges and juries in criminal sentencing” by accepting for review “the issue of whether a violation of the jury’s role in sentencing can ever be excused as ‘harmless error.'”

The case taken up by SCOTUS is Washington v. Recuenco (docket 05-83).  The decision by the Washington Supreme Court was rendered in April and is available here.  I reported on the decision in this post.