Saturday, April 23, 2005

Case Status Update: A Pile O'Opinions

I have done an update of the status of the Indiana Blakely cases to date. I have not re-linked the cases in the lists below. Links to the decisions appear in the sidebar. As always, I cannot account for the status of unpublished decisions I don't know about. If anyone knows about any unpublished Blakely decisions in Indiana, I invite a comment or an email. I'd love to know about them.

Including Heath (Smylie's companion missing in action), an unpublished decision of the Court of Appeals, it appears the Supreme Court has granted transfer without issuing an opinion yet in three cases:

  • Heath
  • Patrick
  • Aguilar

Including Baehl, an unpublished decision, it appears the Supreme Court has 9 transfer petitions pending from published decisions:

  • Baehl
  • Cowens
  • Traylor
  • Trusley
  • Mitchell
  • Wright
  • Ryle
  • Altes
  • Riehle

The Supreme Court has denied transfer in 11 cases.

  • Wilkie
  • Bledsoe
  • Holden
  • Wickliff
  • Teeters
  • Lampitok
  • Payton
  • Berry
  • Stott
  • Strong
  • Abney

I have not looked at the denials to see if there is any pattern to be discerned. I think all of the online dockets for cases with transfer pending inlcude an order that the Supreme Court has taken the case under advisement for consideration with other cases with Blakely issues.

I know occasionally one opinion will decide a number of cases. It's efficient in more than the obvious way: the authoring justice gets credit for each of the cases decided for the price of a single opinion. I think the record might have been set in Floyd v. State, a 1994 case, I think, which decided 7 cases at once. Maybe we're looking at a new record in the near future.

The following 9 cases have become final after decisions by the Court of Appeals in which transfer was not sought:

  • Carson
  • Krebs
  • Ware
  • Milligan
  • Goldsberry
  • Pennington
  • Padilla
  • McNew
  • Edwards

No comments: