Cunningham arrives (and strikes down California sentencing)!

Apprendi, Blakely and now Cunningham … the A,B,C of jury trial rights now includes three cases striking down state sentencing laws giving state judges undue authority to find facts to increase sentences.  Here’s the initial report on Cunningham from SCOTUSblog:

Dividing 6-3, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday that California’s “determinate sentencing law” is unconstitutional because it allows judge’s to find facts that lead to higher criminal sentences.  Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the majority in Cunningham v. California (05-6551).  The California system, the Court said, assigns to the trial judge, not the jury, authority to find the facts that expose a convicted individual to an elevated “upper term” sentence.

How huge Cunningham is for state and federal structured sentencing reforms will depend greatly on exactly what the opinion says.  But, even sight unseen, the outcome of Cunningham spotlights that a majority of the High Court is now more interested in livening up Blakely than in continuing to water it down (as did the Booker remedy).

A lot more commentary will follow throughout today once I see and have a chance to consume the Cunningham opinion.

UPDATE:  This AP account already has this quote from the opinion:

“This court has repeatedly held that, under the Sixth Amendment, any fact that exposes a defendant to a greater potential sentence must be found by the jury, not a judge, and established beyond a reasonable doubt, not merely by a preponderance of the evidence,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the court.