Another remarkable homage to jury trial rights from Judge Young
In June 2004, about a week before the Supreme Court decided Blakely, District Judge William Young of the District of Massachusetts issued this remarkable 174-page opinion in US v. Green concluding that the logic of Apprendi and Ring rendered the federal sentencing guidelines unconstitutional. (Of course, the Supreme Court vindicated Judge Young’s analysis through its subsequent opinions in Blakely and Booker.) Last summer, Judge Young today issued this remarkable 141-page opinion in US v. Kandirakis to explain his view of post-Booker sentencing realities.
Today, Judge Young has completed his third extraordinary opinion spotlighting the importance of jury trial rights and the Apprendi line of cases system through an opinion in US v. Griffin, No. 05-10372 (D. Mass. June 6, 2007) (available for download below). Though weighing in at a svelte 45 pages, Griffin is jam packed with amazing insights and rhetorical flourishes (as well as a cite to Orin Kerr’s favorite recent casenote).
Of particular importance, Griffin give punch to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Cunningham (even though most other federal courts have opted to ignore Cunnigham‘s potential import). Let me quote one of the many major passages from Griffin:
In short, the importance of Cunningham is two-fold. First, much as a codicil is to a revoked will, Cunningham‘s timing — after the internally irreconcilable Booker decisions — republishes the Apprendi/Blakely/Constitutional Booker theme over Remedial Booker’s minimization of the Sixth Amendment. Thus, the epicenter of Sixth Amendment jurisprudence for sentencing purposes is located on the facts found by a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. See Cunningham, 127 S.Ct. at 863-64. Second, the analysis in Cunningham reiterates and clarifies that the “statutory maximum” for Sixth Amendment analysis must be determined, in first instance, by jury-found facts. See id. at 868. For these two purposes, it makes no difference that Cunningham focuses on a state sentencing law instead of the federal advisory sentencing guidelines.