Florida Death Row Advocacy Group

Stanford Law Review Sentencing Issue:
This week, the Stanford Law Review, is publishing a special issue on the challenges of criminal sentencing reform and improvement: “A More Perfect System: Twenty-Five Years of Guidelines Sentencing Reform”. {Business Manager, Stanford Law Review, Crown Quadrangle, Stanford, CA 94305-8610}

State Blakely Cases Make Their Way to Supreme Court.
Cert. petitions are pending in Blakely. On June 24, 2004, the sentencing reform story was forever changed when an explosion in the form of the Supreme Court's decision in Blakely v. Washington 542 U.S. 961; 125 S. Ct. 21 struck the sentencing landscape. Though technically only declaring unconstitutional one portion of one state's sentencing guideline system, Justice Antonio Scalia's dramatic opinion for the Court in Blakely suggests that any and every fact, which increases a defendant’s effective maximum sentence, must be found by a jury beyond a reasonable doubt or admitted by the defendant. In other words, Blakely suggests the Constitution does not permit judges to find facts, which increase applicable sentencing ranges, even though nearly all sentencing reforms of the past two decades have made judges central and essential fact-finders in the application of sentencing laws. Consequently, the ramifications of Blakely for modern guideline sentencing reforms — indeed, for the entire criminal justice system — cannot be overstated.

Blakeley in Florida
Siglar v. Florida: Finding a Sixth Amendment limit on appellate judge fact-finding In the case of Sigler v. Florida, 805 So. 2d 32 (2004), a Florida intermediate appellate court explained that, before Apprendi and Blakely,

the "Florida Supreme Court [had] construed [Florida code] section 924.34 to authorize appellate judges to make a finding of guilt as to each element of permissive lesser included offenses in place of a jury determination. See I.T. v. State, 694 So. 2d 720 (Fla. 1997)." The Sigler court then explains its view that: [T]hese later decisions [of Apprendi and Blakely] make it clear beyond any doubt that section 924.34 as interpreted in I.T. is contrary to the Sixth Amendment when the previous jury determination cannot be deemed to have necessarily found defendant guilty as to every element of the permissive lesser included offense. That means that as for this circumstance we are expressly holding the statute invalid under the United States Constitution. In other words, the Sigler court is finding a Sixth Amendment limit on appellate judge fact-finding as well as sentencing judge fact-finding.

Florida Supreme Court Capital Decision Review
Perez v. Florida, 74 U.S.L.W. 3273,

Relief Granted: Conviction affirmed, death sentence vacated and remand for new penalty hearing.

Reasoning:
Trial court erred in applying the HAC {heinous, atrocious or cruel aggravator} aggravator to Perez. Trial court found one statutory mitigating factor along with fourteen nonstatutory mitigators, thus court cannot state that consideration by the jury and the trial judge of this aggravating factor was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt .