Via Law Prof Doug Berman of Sentencing Law and Policy:

Re-load the paper in your printers, because I have be lucky enough to receive pdf copies of the documents that United States has filed in the Supreme Court today seeking expedited review of US v. Booker and US v. Fanfan!! It appears that US v. Booker will be assigned docket number 04-104, and US v. Fanfan will be assigned docket number 04-105.

Professor Berman has uploaded the text of the documents to his site:

• Here are the Booker documents (including the joint motion to expedite):
  
  Download booker_fanfan_motion_to_expedite.pdf
  
  Download Booker.Petition.pdf
  
  Download Booker.App.A.pdf

• Here are the Fanfan documents:
  
  Download FanFan.Petition.pdf
  
  Download FanFan.Appendix.pdf
  
  Download fanfan_app.attach.16-21.pdf

Once again, we're very excited for TalkLeft Contributor TChris who won the Booker case in the 7th Circuit and hopefully now will head to the Supreme Court.

by TChris

Howard Bashman at How Appealing reports that a divided panel of the Ninth Circuit has ruled that Blakely invalidates the federal sentencing guidelines as they were applied to the defendant in the Ninth Circuit case. The opinion is here (pdf).

Anyone want to play the Republican Convention Drinking Game?

Game author Scott, of I Know What I Know, says he's now working on a version for the Democratic Convention. [Hat tip to Deb in Chicago.]

Atrios and Tom Tomorrow will be in Boston for the Democratic Convention and would like to be invited to some "truly excellent parties."

Update: Matt Yglesias wants party invitations too.

Law Prof Doug Berman of Sentencing Law and Policy reports that in a first Blakely ruling from the federal courts in Florida, United States District Judge Gregory A. Presnell of the Middle District of Florida (Orlando division) finds the federal sentencing guidelines unconstitutional in their entirety. The case is US v. King, No. 6:04-cr-35. Some quotes:

Taking Blakely to its logical conclusion, the determinate scheme set up by the Guidelines violates the Constitution and can no longer be used in any case. The Court notes, however, that despite a return to an indeterminate sentencing scheme, it will continue to rely on the Guidelines as recommendations worthy of serious consideration. Slip op. at p. 12 (emphasis added).

....The suggestion that courts use the Guidelines in some cases but not others is at best schizophrenic and at worst contrary to basic principles of justice, practicality, fairness, due process, and equal protection. Courts simply cannot apply a determinate sentencing code to one defendant whose sentence raises no judicial fact-finding enhancement issues and a separate discretionary scheme to another defendant whose sentence does raise enhancement issues. Such a structure not only seems to violate equal protection principles but would lead to the perverse result that both Government and criminal defense attorneys would plot to finagle their way into the determinate system or indeterminate system depending on the judge and the various factors relevant to the particular defendant’s sentence.

Salon writer Geraldine Sealey picks up on the friction caused by Alex Jones' slam of bloggers attending the convention with press credentials. She says it better than we could, so we'll just quote:

The difference between most bloggers and journalists is usually what attracts readers to blogs in the first place. Bloggers, among other things, chronicle, archive, editorialize, provide community for the like-minded and forums for debate, and emphasize key points being lost in the din of the mainstream coverage. Blogs provide a helpful lens, even if a partisan one, for understanding mainstream media coverage. And since blog readers are usually voracious news junkies, blogs provide them a supplement to the daily consumption of mainstream news -- they don't necessarily supplant say, the Washington Post. As with all flavors of media outlets, there are good blogs and bad, prominent ones that have risen on their reputation and track record, and others you can probably do without.

Scotus Blog reports as follows:

Our sources who litigate these cases and have excellent contacts (you know who you are, and we thank you) tell us that there is an excellent prospect that the Solicitor General will likely take the post-Blakely questions under the Guidelines to the Supreme Court on Wednesday. One or both of two filings are contemplated: a cert. petition in the Seventh Circuit's Booker case (in which Judges Posner and Easterbrook divided); and a petition for cert. before judgment in United States v. Fanfan (a district court decision from the District of Maine that was just appealed by the government to the First Circuit). Both cases involve drug conspiracies.

The government will move to expedite both the cert. and merits stages of the cases, seeking: that any response to the petitions be filed within a week, that cert. be granted by August 2, and that merits briefing be completed by mid-September or early-October (under alternative schedules that are being discussed). Argument would be held immediately thereafter.

The Booker case was briefed and argued in the 7th Circuit by TalkLeft contributor TChris. We can't wait till he gets to the Supreme Court. On the other hand, if the Supremes take the case, it will entail an enormous amount of work, particularly in light of the expedited briefing schedule, and he may have less time to blog. Then again, if we had a choice between litigating a case in the Supreme Court and blogging, we know which one we'd choose, so we're behind TChris all the way. Even if it means blogging alone for a while.

The New York Times is expected to break the news Tuesday, although the cert petitions most likely won't be filed until Wednesday. We don't know for sure which of the two cases--or whether both will be taken up to the High Court, but we have a strong suspicion it will be both of them.

Update: As predicted, here is the New York Times article.

In a 4-3 split decision, the Colorado Supreme Court today upheld a trial court's order in the Kobe Bryant Case prohibiting the media from publishing or disclosing the contents of transcripts of a sealed hearing disseminated to the media through a mistake by the court reporter--even though it is a prior restraint of press.

"This prior restraint is necessary to protect against an evil that is great and certain and would result from reportage," the court ruled.

Justice Michael Bender (formerly an esteemed Colorado criminal defense lawyer) wrote the dissenting opinion:

Justice Michael Bender .... said it was unfair to hold the media responsible if a court failed to do its job to protect confidential information. "The power the majority authorizes is the power of the government to censor the media, which is precisely the power the First Amendment forbids," Bender wrote.

The text of the decision is available here.

Alex Jones in the LA Times rants about bloggers getting press credentials to cover the Democratic National Convention in Boston. Matt Welch, a journalist and blogger who is attending, responds:

There are two types of reporting that even the most nakedly partisan political bloggers routinely engage in: eyewitness testimony, and press review-style research. Both of which, and particularly the former, will add value to the conventions, which are largely made-for-TV fabrications that can benefit from more you-are-there-behind-the-curtain reportage. Also, it can be very useful to read descriptions by people whose politics are on their sleeve & whose takes on things you trust from intimate personal experience.

Jones writes:

"With the status conferred by convention credentials, blogging has arrived as an engaging, important new player in the information carnival."

Matt responds:

It takes the issuance of credentials by a friggin' political party to confer status on people who have built huge audiences from scratch and invigorated the mediasphere by writing for free? What a warped view of journalism.

Jones equates the blogger's attributes with those of "a blustering know-it-all in a bar." Well, he has that right. We're all meeting for drinks Sunday night in Cambridge. Matt, see you then. [link via Instapundit.]

We don't know enough about the ins and outs of security to know if these photos are cause for concern for not, but Granite Island Group thinks they render the Fleet Center vulnerable during the Democratic Convention. We're pretty optimistic that the authorities will have everything under control by the time we all descend on Boston. (Via Cryptome and Brain-stream.

There will be unprecedented video surveillance in Boston during the Democratic National Convention, including:

...some 30 cameras near the FleetCenter, the Coast Guard using infrared devices and night-vision cameras in the harbor, and dozens of pieces of surveillance equipment mounted on downtown buildings to monitor crowds for terrorists, unruly demonstrators, and ordinary street crime.

For the first time, 75 high-tech video cameras operated by the federal government will be linked into a surveillance network to monitor the Central Artery, City Hall Plaza, the FleetCenter, and other sensitive sites. Their feeds from cameras mounted on various downtown buildings will be piped to monitoring stations in the Boston area and in Washington, D.C., and officials will be able to zoom in from their work stations to gather details of facial descriptions or read license plates.

More than 100 cameras will monitor activity on buses and the subway. To demonstrate a point we make frequently, that once you give new powers to the Government it rarely gives them back, consider this:

While video surveillance has become a common tool for police and private security personnel, Boston police and federal officials concede that the additional cameras and new technology represent another chapter in Boston. And it's here to stay: Boston police say the 30 or so cameras installed for the convention will be used throughout the city once the event is over. ''We own them now," said police Superintendent Robert Dunford. ''We're certainly not going to put them in a closet."

We share the concerns of the ACLU and other civil libertarians:

Civil libertarians warn that the latest technology will be used to scare away protesters and others exercising their rights under the First Amendment. The critics complain that there are few state and federal laws regulating the use of video surveillance in public places. ''What this demonstrates is that '1984' is now technologically possible," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Technology and Liberty Program, referring to George Orwell's vision of an all-seeing totalitarian state. ''This is really a situation where we are really being asked to blindly trust the government. There is no oversight of this. There are no safeguards."

The Wall Street Journal (subscription only) has some very high praise today for Law Professor Doug Berman's Sentencing Law and Policy blog that is keeping track of all things Blakely related.

For the nation's federal judges and the defense lawyers and convicts who come before them, June 24 was a momentous day. For Douglas Berman, a 35-year-old law professor at Ohio State University in Columbus, the day marked the beginning of his Warholian moments of fame. On that date, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down tough sentencing guidelines used in Washington state. The high court said any factor increasing a criminal sentence must be admitted by the defendant in a plea deal or proved to a jury. Since then, Mr. Berman has become the chronicler of the sweeping effect of the Blakely v. Washington ruling on the nation's courts.

As the creator of a Web log, or blog, called Sentencing Law and Policy , Mr. Berman has established himself as the go-to guy for all things Blakely for federal and state judges, defense lawyers, prosecutors and prisoners' relatives. Although the 5-4 Supreme Court ruling technically affects only one state's court system, its greatest impact so far has been on federal sentencing guidelines, whose constitutionality has been called into question in dozens of court rulings nationwide, almost all of them posted on Mr. Berman's blog.

No question about it, Professor Berman has become the "go-to source" on Blakely. He's due not only praise, but a big thank you.