Blakely Hits Home

As the local papers report here and here, one of the judges of the Southern District has used Blakely to strike down portions of the US Sentencing Guidelines. Specifically, he resentenced a defendant who pled guilty to conspiracy to manufacture methamphetamine, dropping his sentence from 240 months to 1 year.

The judge knocked out all of the Guideline enhancements based on drug quantity (most of which came from second-hand snitch hearsay) and other specific offense characteristics. This approach differs from the one of a federal judge in Utah who threw out the Guidelines in their entirety. It's not beyond the realm of possibility that the local decision will be the test case for the rest of the country, depending on how the Department of Justice plays its hand.