Going retro…
As noted here, today the Supreme Court this morning will hear arguments in Burton v. Waddington, the case addressing Blakely retroactivity. Kent Scheidegger here at Crime & Consequences points to this Criminal Justice Legal Foundation press release explaining why he is hoping for a decision that will “prevent the retroactive application of Blakely.”
Because I am a big fan of Blakely, I believe justice is served by not completely shutting out defendants from Blakely claims just because it took the Supreme Court a long time to finally and fully develop Apprendi/Blakely principles. That said, I would be quite concerned about the impact of Blakely retroactivity if the Supreme Court last term in Recuenco had indicated that Blakely errors required automatic reversals. But since Blakely errors can (and surely often will) be subject to harmless error analysis, I am rooting for the Supreme Court to give Blakely some retroactive application. But I am not betting on it.
Some related posts on Blakely retroactivity: