HIGH COURT: FEDERAL SENTENCING SYSTEM WRONGLY APPLIED

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that federal judges
have been improperly adding time to criminals' sentences, a decision that
puts in doubt longtime sentencing rules.

The court, on a 5-4 vote, said that its ruling last June that juries -- not
judges -- should consider factors that can add years to defendants' prison
sentences applies as well to the 17-year-old federal guideline system.

The justices refused to backtrack from the 5-4 decision that struck down a
state sentencing system because it gave judges too much leeway in
sentencing. But the high court stopped short of striking down the federal
system.

Justice Stephen Breyer said the federal sentencing system is at least in
part invalid because it forces judges to be driven by the guidelines. But
he said that the system could be salvaged, if judges use it on an advisory
basis.

Justice Antonin Scalia said that solution would "wreak havoc on federal
district and appellate courts quite needlessly, and for the indefinite future."

About 64,000 people are sentenced in federal courts each year, under a
system that had been challenged as unconstitutional in a pair of cases at
the Supreme Court.

The divided ruling announced Wednesday took longer than expected. Justices
had put the issue on a fast track, scheduling special arguments on the
first day of their nine-month term in October.

Most court watchers expected a ruling before the holidays.

The federal guidelines are intended to make sure sentences do not vary
widely from courtroom to courtroom. While juries consider guilt or
innocence, judges make factual decisions that affect prison time, such as
the amount of drugs involved in a crime, the number of victims in a fraud
or whether a defendant committed perjury during trial.

The high court's vote that federal defendants were entitled to jury
judgments was 5-4 and included the same odd right-left combination of
justices as those who had held sway in June. Scalia and Justice Clarence
Thomas are the court's most conservative members. Justices John Paul
Stevens, David H. Souter, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg are in the liberal wing.

In a dissent, the other four justices wrote: "history does not support a
'right to jury trial' in respect to sentencing facts." Those four are Chief
Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony
Kennedy and Breyer.

A different coalition of justices, led by Breyer, voted to allow the
sentencing guidelines to stand, but not force judges to use them.

"We're disappointed in the ruling and we are currently reviewing it. We
will have more to say later," said Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo.

The federal guidelines were being contested in two cases involving men
convicted on drug charges in Wisconsin and Maine.

Justices, in siding with one of the men, opened the door to thousands of
claims by other defendants. Stevens said that not all of them will get new
sentencing hearings. Judges must sort through the claims, he said, to
determine which defendants have current appeals on the subject.

Defense lawyers and prosecutors had been anxiously awaiting the ruling.

"The whole federal criminal law system is operating in a state of suspended
animation," said Jeffrey Fisher, a Seattle attorney who argued last year's
sentencing case. People have been waiting "for the shoe to drop so we can
start grappling with the hard issues in the aftermath."

The cases are United States v. Booker, case no. 04-104, and United States
v. Fanfan, case no. 04-105.