Vol. 37, Number 8—August 2005

Impact of Blakely and Booker/Fanfan a Year Later

Two key Supreme Court decisions may explain an increase of nearly 13,000 sentence-related cases in the federal courts. In the year since Blakely v. Washington, over 6,400 additional cases have been filed in district courts, with an equal number in the courts of appeals.

The 2004 Supreme Court decision in Blakely, struck down Washington state’s sentencing guidelines, saying that any aggravating factors used to increase a criminal sentence must be proven to a jury, not decided by a judge.

When the Supreme Court’s subsequent opinion in the consolidated cases, United States v. Booker and United States v. Fanfan, made the federal sentencing guidelines advisory, the federal courts braced for an influx of cases. It was anticipated—accurately, it now appears—that a significant number of inmates would ask district and appellate courts to reconsider sentences imposed prior

For the time period between July 1, 2004 and June 30, 2005:

• 97 percent more prisoners filed motions in the federal district courts challenging their federal sentences (28 U.S.C. section 2255 motions), than for the same time period in the prior year, and 30 percent more than for the same time period in 2001, following the Apprendi v. New Jersey decision. In the 2000 Apprendi decision, the Court ruled that except for a fact of prior conviction, only juries can increase sentences above the statutory maximum. Apprendi raised similar issues to Blakely and Booker, and thus had analogous consequences in terms of criminal filings. If filings of section 2255 motions after Booker follow the pattern seen after Apprendi, then the bulk of these motions remain to be filed, sometime between now and January 2006. Under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act this is the filing deadline for federal prisoners.
  
  
• 5 percent more petitions were filed by prisoners who exhausted appeals over their sentences in state courts and filed in the federal district courts, than for the same time period in the prior year, and
  
  
• 7 percent fewer state petitions were filed than for the same time period in 2001, following Apprendi.
  
  
• 32 percent more criminal appeals, as shown in the graph, were filed in the courts of appeals than for the same time period in the prior year and 42 percent more than for the same time period in 2001, following Apprendi. The growth in criminal appeals since Blakely and Booker is of much larger magnitude than the rise in these appeals following
  the Apprendi decision.
  
  
• 92 percent more second or successive motions raising legal issues on which a court had previously ruled (28 U.S.C. section 2244 motions) were filed in the appeals courts, than for the same time period in the prior year but
  
  
• 13 percent fewer than for the same time period in 2001, following the Apprendi decision.
  
  
• 28 percent more section 2255 motions were filed in the courts of appeals, than for the same time period in the prior year, and 12 percent more than for the same time period in 2001, following Apprendi.
  
  
• All Courts of Appeals, except the 2nd Circuit, received more criminal and habeas corpus appeals since Blakely than they had received during the corresponding 12-month period in 2004. The 2nd Circuit received slightly fewer appeals.
  
  
• 75 percent more appeals have been remanded by the appeals courts since Blakely, than during the same 12-month period in 2004, and 69 percent more than for the same time period in 2001, following Apprendi.