Washington Supreme Court addresses consecutive sentencing and Blakely

Another helpful reader has sent me this report on a notable state Blakely ruling in In re Personal Restraint of VanDelft, No. 77733-1 (Wash. Nov. 30, 2006) (available here):

The Washington State Supreme Court, in a 7 – 2 decision, holds that, where a Washington state statute requires that “[f]elonies that are not serious violent offenses ‘shall be served concurrently'” and that “[c]onsecutive sentences for [such] crimes may be imposed only ‘under the exceptional sentence provisions of [another state statute]'”, and where the trial court in this case imposed consecutive sentences based on its own, and not a jury’s, findings that concurrent sentencing would “fail to hold [VanDelft] accountable for all of the crimes for which he was convicted”, the defendant was sentenced in violation of Blakely.  (The Court had previously held that “[t]he conclusion that allowing a current offense to go unpunished is clearly too lenient is a factual determination that cannot be made by the trial court following Blakely“.)

This ruling, in addition to being important in Washington, may dovetail with some of the issues that were debated in Burton, the Blakely retroactivity case now awaiting a decision from the Supreme Court.