Maine District Judge D. Brock Hornby in US v. Fanfan concludes that the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines are "exactly comparable to the Washington state scheme in all respects material to the Blakely decision." Then, Judge Hornby concludes that he cannot consider at sentencing relevant conduct drug amounts beyond the 500 grams of cocaine powder as found by the jury, he can not include "crack" testified to but not charged in the indictment and not found by the jury and he can not apply a role enhancement. Thus, despite a pre-sentence report calculating an offense level of 36 and a guideline sentencing range of 188-235 months, Judge Hornby decides Blakely requires reducing that to an offense level of 26 (500 grams powder = offense level 26) for a sentencing range of 63-78 months. Exercising his discretion and finding the defendant was a leader, he sentences at the maximum within the range, 78 months, a fine and 5 years supervised release.

As we mentioned earlier, the Washington Post reports this afternoon on the release of the DC tractor man--the judge who sentenced him to 6 years last week has cut his sentence to 16 months, freeing him, and the DC appeals circuit turned down DOJ's appeal to stay his release.

Families Against Mandatory Minimums has this analysis of the Blakely decision.