CA1: Booker and Blakely don’t apply to sentencing reductions, and guilty pleas

US v. Morrisette, No. 04-2387.  The court rejects an argument that someone with a history of mental illness failed to render a proper guilty plea.  The court discusses the caselaw regarding how to handle someone on a lot of medication who is pleading guilty, and agrees with the lower court’s findings that he knew what he was doing.  The court determined the drug weight at sentencing to be 70 grams, without a laboratory analysis.  However, since this was based on a fact admitted at the plea, this wasn’t a problem. 

But the District Court did even more:

During the Rule 11 colloquy, the district court informed Morrisette that, given the recent decision in Blakely v. Washington, 542 U.S. 296 (2004) (invalidating state sentencing guidelines similar to the federal Guidelines), it was possible that the Supreme Court might determine that the Guidelines violated a defendant’s Sixth Amendment rights where the court predicated its sentence upon a drug quantity not determined by a jury.

The court finds that the safety valve provision of 18 U.S.C. § 3553(f)(2) and U.S.S.G. § 2D1.1(b)(7) doesn’t require jury fact-finding because Booker only applies to enhancements.

Finally, there the court denies a general Booker remand because he didn’t show he could have done any better under the Booker regime.

Comments

[daniel]

i have a client who suffers from {redacted} mental illnesses, this person is in prison for a crime she took no part in, and her court appointed pretender allowed her to plea out to the {redacted}, as well as {redacted} from a {redacted}. The court appointed attroeny knew well in advance that her client suffers from these potent disorders This is in kansas, any help with case law in these areas will be greatly apprecitated. Further more this client was ordered to stay away from the {redacted} defendants however the other sentenceing judge of the male def. put him in the same comm corrections unit as my client. The laws are really vague in this area. WE NEED HELP ASAP email at daniel_jackson1@yahoo.com SHALOM

[S. COTUS]

Daniel, First of all, calling people “Public Pretenders” won’t advance the conversation. Second of all, as much as I appreciate the cause of criminal defense, and I am often accused of being extremely anti-prosecution: many, many people in jail deserve to be there. They will tell anyone that listens (especially social-worker-types, mental-health-types, and the like) that somehow they didn’t get a fair shake. Indeed, I have seen it before. Several times this month, and I don’t even go looking.

If you want to help your client, get him a lawyer. Don’t post to the internet things that could hurt your client’s case. (I am going to try and redact some thing that I think you should not have said.) But, this lawyer might not tell you what you want to hear. It may be that your client is faking (common), or that even with his disorder (common) he could still intelligently make a plea, and he would still have been, as a legal matter, guilty if all the facts were as alleged.