Saturday, April 16, 2005

Tennessee Supreme Court drops the ball on Blakely issues?

A commenter to this Professor Berman about the Tennessee Supreme Court's attempts to distinguish Blakely in the Gomez case says the "majority opinion reads like it is from the Bizzaro universe."

This morning in Grundy I met a 3L who is going to clerk for Justice Birch. Justice Birch joined in the dissent by Justice Anderson in the Gomez case.

Notwithstanding the debate among the Virginia AG candidates over the sentencing guidelines, one good thing about what we have in Virginia - is no Blakely/Booker problem, so far as I understand these things. On this constitutional issue, it is conceivable that fiddling with the guidelines in ways that would provide for the imposition of enhanced sentences by judges would be a big step in the wrong direction.

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