Courtwatch – Presumptive Sentencing

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last month on a Washington State kidnapping case will likely change sentencing guidelines for as many as a dozen states, including Alaska. In Blakely v. Washington, the original judge nearly doubled the presumptive sentence beyond the maximum specified by state sentencing guidelines because of what the judge thought was “deliberate cruelty” by the defendant. A majority of Supreme Court justices determined that such a sentence violated Ralph Blakely’s sixth amendment right to a jury trial.