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2004-2005 Preview U.S. Sup. Ct. Cas. 1 (2004-2005)

handle is hein.journals/prvw31 and id is 1 raw text is: COVERING THE COURT'S ENTIRE OCTOBER CALENDAR OF CASES, INCLUDING ... UNITED STATES V. BOOKER AND UNITED STATES V. FANFAN Under the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines, many fact-findings-for instance, about the amount of drugs a convicted criminal possessed or the amount of money he swindled-are made by judges, not juries. So last term, when the Court struck down a Washington state sentencing provision that enabled the judge, not the jury, to find the aggravating factors that increased a defendant's sentence, it cast doubt on theconstitutionality of the federal guidelines as well. The United States government filed expedited petitions for certio- rari in these two post-Blakely v. Washington sentencing cases in the hope of obtaining some quick guidance on this issue, which could affect thousands of cases. ROPER V. SIMMONS Under the Supreme Court's Eighth Amendment analysis, the Court will look at whether evolving standards of decency in American society have rendered capital punishment 'cruel and unusual in some of its applications. This case asks whether these standards have evolved since the Court last took up the issue in 1989 and have rendered unconstitutional the execution of someone who com- mitted murder as a juvenile (under 18 years of age). An additional issue is whether a state court can reach its own determination of whether a particular punishment is cruel and unusual when the U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled on that point.

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