Looking ahead to SCOTUS Blakely action

As detailed over at SCOTUSblog, there wasn’t any notable sentencing action in the Supreme Court’s work today and now the Court goes into recess for four weeks.  Not only does this schedule allow everyone plenty of time to enjoy SuperBowl hype, it also provides time to gear up for the notable Blakely action that will be on tap when the Justice get back to work.  Specifically, there are at least two big Blakely stories that will unfold in the coming months:

• As shown from this docket sheet, the Gomez case from Tennessee (background in this post) is scheduled for its third SCOTUS conference on February 17.  And, intriguingly, a number of the Blakely cases coming from California will also be conferenced that day, as revealed by docket sheets in Black, Cunningham, Diaz, and Harless.  Consequently, by the second half of February, we ought to have some new information and insights concerning whether, when and how the Supreme Court may examine state sentencing systems that have elided Blakely.

• A bit of Blakely March madness will develop around the Supreme Court’s consideration of Washington v. Recuenco (docket 05-83), which concerns whether Blakely errors can be subject to harmless-error analysis.  Though not yet officially scheduled, Recuenco will likely be argued in the second half of March.  I provided some coverage of Recuenco back in October when cert. was granted, and I plan to discuss the case a lot more as oral argument approaches.

Folks interested in these and other state Blakely stories should be sure to check out this recent issue of the Federal Sentencing Reporter, which provides thorough and thoughtful coverage of the state of Blakely in the States.  More background on that issue is available at this post.

UPDATE:  Based on this post about the argument schedule at SCOTUSblog, it now appears that Recuenco won’t be argued until April (even though cert. was granted well before some of the cases now scheduled to be argued in March).  Hmmmm.