Court orders changes in sentencing

One practical effect of the ruling is that prosecutors will probably be forced to return more detailed indictments and to prove, at trial, facts they believe may be relevant at sentencing.

Sentencing guidelines were designed to limit judicial discretion while adding a degree of uniformity to punishments. To make sentences more predictable and proportionate, and to avoid unintended disparities among similarly situated defendants, the guidelines system applied an array of relevant factors to help guide judges toward a narrow sentencing range.

In addition to the core criminal charges, judges were required to consider many other factors such as criminal history, whether the defendant used a firearm, whether any victims were harmed, and whether the defendant admitted guilt and helped authorities prosecute others. Each factor was assigned a numerical value to be plugged into a chart that would reveal an appropriate sentencing range.

Where the system ran into constitutional difficulties is when a judge at a sentencing hearing accepted certain factors that increased the defendant's sentence beyond the punishment authorized by the jury's verdict.

While a jury verdict requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt, a judge has had the power under the sentencing guidelines to significantly boost sentences based on factors proved to the judge by a much lower burden of proof during a sentencing hearing conducted long after trial.

Prior to the introduction of the federal guidelines in 1987, federal judges had wide discretion to use whatever factors they felt were relevant to determine an appropriate sentence. Sometimes the wide discretion allowed impermissible biases - such as race and ethnicity - to creep into the system.

The guidelines helped make the sentencing process more transparent and made it more difficult for personal bias to play a substantial role.

But even as some supporters defended the guidelines for injecting certainty and fairness into the sentencing process, others criticized the system for tying the hands of judges in certain cases.

The decision stems from the high court's decision last June invalidating a portion of Washington State's sentencing guidelines in a case called Blakely v. Washington. In this case, the court ruled that sentencing guidelines permitting a judge to sentence an individual to a longer term than called for by the crime found by the jury violates the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial.

Although the court at the time said it was not extending its ruling to the federal guidelines, many experts said that would be the inevitable result.

And many federal judges seem to have agreed. The June decision caused a backlog in federal criminal cases, as judges awaited more specific instructions from the Supreme Court.

The court took up the issue on an emergency basis. The justices heard oral arguments on the first day of its new term on Oct. 4 in two combined cases, US v. Booker and US v. Fanfan.

• Linda Feldmann contributed to this report.

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