New York rulings of great interest

In an opinion which can now be found on Lexis, US v. Medas, 2004 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 12135 (E.D.N.Y. July 1, 2004), District Judge I. Leo Glasser discusses Judge Cassell’s Croxford opinion and states that he is “driven to arrive at the same conclusion [that the FSG are unconstitutional] for the reasons stated by Judge Cassell in a language that is eloquent in its simplicity and clarity.”

Judge Glasser discusses this issue in a fascinating context. Apparently he has a jury deliberating in a criminal case now, but “immediately after the jury retired to deliberate the government submitted a 20 page Supplemental Verdict Sheet with a request that it, too, be provided to the jury. That Supplemental Verdict Sheet, the government urged, was the legitimate offspring of Blakely.” After explaining that the government’s “pre-Blakely indictment does not allege the enhancing sentencing factors the government now requests be submitted to the jury post-trial” and that “no mention was made of those factors during the trial,” Judge Glasser refuses to submit the Supplemental Verdict Sheet to the still deliberating jury. (And, along the way, Judge Glasser gives a nice plug to Judge Learned Hand.) Another WOW!

While we are in a New York state of mind, I’ve been meaning to mention a ruling by Judge Deborah Batts of the Southern District of New York from earlier this week. In United States v. Gonzalez, 2004 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 11760 (S.D.N.Y. June 28, 2004), Judge Batts noted that “Blakely calls into serious question the long-standing practices of federal courts in implementing the United States Sentencing Guidelines.” She granted the Government its requested two-week adjournment while putting “the parties on notice that … the Court is currently of the mind to sentence the Defendant solely on the basis of the facts admitted by the defendant during his guilty plea.”