Supreme Court: Judges alone can't impose extra-long prison terms [View All]

Thursday, June 24, 2004 · Last updated 11:28 a.m. PT

Supreme Court: Judges alone can't impose extra-long prison terms

By ANNE GEARAN
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

WASHINGTON -- A divided U.S. Supreme Court underscored Thursday that the constitutional right to a jury trial forbids a judge from acting alone to tack additional time onto a convict's sentence.

By a 5-4 vote, the court overturned the sentence of a Washington state man who got more than seven years in prison for kidnapping his estranged wife in 1998. A judge had said the four-year term called for in state sentencing guidelines was too lenient.

The judge said Ralph Howard Blakely acted with "deliberate cruelty" that merited a longer term than Blakely or prosecutors had anticipated.

The right to a jury trial "is no mere procedural formality, but a fundamental reservation of power in our constitutional structure," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for an odd right-left lineup of justices.

Blakely "was sentenced to prison for more than three years beyond what the law allowed for the crime to which he confessed, on the basis of a disputed finding," by the trial judge, Scalia wrote.
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http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/aplocal_story.asp?category=6420&slug=Scotus%20Sentences