Much Ado about Sentencing: The Influence of Apprendi, Blakely, and Booker in the U.S. Courts of Appeals*

In a line of cases commencing with Apprendi v. New Jersey (2000), the Supreme Court has held the Constitution commands that juries must decide factual issues that lead to sentencing determinations by judges. When the Apprendi logic was extended to Blakely v. Washington (2004) regarding state sentencing guidelines, the mandatory sentencing scheme in the federal Sentencing Guidelines seemed threatened. Indeed, the Supreme Court contin ued this line of thinking in United States v. Booker (2005), when it held the mandatory nature of the federal Sentencing Guidelines unconstitutional. 1 analyze the influence of these Supreme Court decisions by showing how the courts of appeals handled these new directives in sentencing, particularly during the short time between Blakely and Booker when the state of the law in federal courts was in flux. My purpose is to decipher how the federal courts han dled this area of the law while it remained open and subject to dissimilar interpretations. Accordingly, I traverse the federal courts' rationale for sentencing from Apprendi to Booker, concentrating in detail on the short time frame between Blakely and Booker.