Opinion ID: 852836
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Why is Smylie Entitled to Raise Blakely Issues on Appeal?

Text: The State claims that Smylie has forfeited his right to pursue this issue. Smylie did not request that the trial court submit aggravating circumstances to a jury, nor did he raise a Blakely claim in his appellate brief, filed in January 2004. Under regular appellate practice, this would forfeit the claim.
It is firmly established that, a new rule for the conduct of criminal prosecutions is to be applied retroactively to all cases, state or federal, pending on direct review or not yet final, with no exception for cases in which the new rule constitutes a `clear break' with the past. Griffith v. Kentucky, 479 U.S. 314, 328, 107 S.Ct. 708, 93 L.Ed.2d 649 (1987). A rule is new for the purposes of retroactivity if the result was not dictated by precedent existing at the time the defendant's conviction became final. Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288, 301, 109 S.Ct. 1060, 103 L.Ed.2d 334 (1989). Blakely was decided while Smylie's case was still pending on direct appeal, and thus, the initial question is whether the result in Blakely was dictated by existing precedent. The State apparently concedes that Blakely constitutes a new rule for the purposes of retroactivity. [11] Correctly so. While Blakely certainly states that it is merely an application of the rule we expressed in Apprendi v. New Jersey,  542 U.S. at ___, 124 S.Ct. at 2536, it is clear that Blakely went beyond Apprendi by defining the term statutory maximum. As the Seventh Circuit recently said, it alters courts' understanding of `statutory maximum' and therefore runs contrary to the decisions of every federal court of appeals [that had previously] held that Apprendi did not apply to guideline calculations made within the statutory maximum. Simpson v. United States, 376 F.3d 679, 681 (7th Cir.2004)(collecting cases). Because Blakely radically reshaped our understanding of a critical element of criminal procedure, and ran contrary to established precedent, we conclude that it represents a new rule of criminal procedure. [12]
Of course, as the State points out, the application of Blakely to any case pending on direct review remains subject to the standard rules governing appellate procedure such as waiver and forfeiture. [13] To receive the benefit of a new rule of law, a claimant must preserve the issue for appeal. In Pirnat v. State, 607 N.E.2d 973 (Ind.1993), for example, we considered the retroactive applicability of our decision about the admissibility of depraved sexual instinct evidence to cases pending on appeal at the time Lannan v. State, 600 N.E.2d 1334 (Ind.1992) was decided. We declared that Pirnat and others whose cases properly preserved the issue and whose cases were pending on direct appeal at the time Lannan was decided receive the benefit of review under the new rule. Pirnat, 607 N.E.2d at 974 (emphasis added). [14] Pirnat had previously challenged the admission of the depraved sexual instinct evidence at trial and on appeal. Pirnat v. State, 596 N.E.2d 259 (Ind.Ct.App.1992). We reached the same conclusion in Coleman v. State, 558 N.E.2d 1059 (Ind.1990), when we considered the retroactive applicability of the constitutional rule announced in Booth v. Maryland, 482 U.S. 496, 107 S.Ct. 2529, 96 L.Ed.2d 440 (1987) and South Carolina v. Gathers, 490 U.S. 805, 109 S.Ct. 2207, 104 L.Ed.2d 876 (1989) to cases pending on direct appeal at the time those rules were announced. [15] Although we concluded that Booth and Gathers applied retroactively to cases pending on direct appeal, we made clear that we considered the rule to apply to the direct appeal of a trial occurring before those cases were decided so long as the appellant has preserved [the issue for appeal] by objecting at trial.  Coleman, 558 N.E.2d at 1061 (emphasis added). We have utilized this same approach in other cases. See, e.g., Ried v. State, 615 N.E.2d 893 (Ind.1993); Daniels v. State, 561 N.E.2d 487 (Ind.1990). On this principle of appellate law, Indiana jurisprudence is rather ordinary. In United States v. Cotton, 535 U.S. 625, 122 S.Ct. 1781, 152 L.Ed.2d 860 (2002), for example, the Supreme Court applied the plain error test to a case pending on appeal when the new rule in Apprendi was announced. In so doing, the Court noted that Cotton's claim was forfeited because of his failure to object to alleged error at trial. Id. at 629, 631, 122 S.Ct. 1781. Similarly, in Johnson v. United States, 520 U.S. 461, 117 S.Ct. 1544, 137 L.Ed.2d 718 (1997), the Court considered the retroactive application of the rule announced in United States v. Gaudin, 515 U.S. 506, 115 S.Ct. 2310, 132 L.Ed.2d 444 (1995), to a case pending on appeal at the time of that decision. In considering Johnson's claim, the Court noted that [b]ecause petitioner is still on direct review, Griffith requires that we apply Gaudin retroactively. Johnson, 520 U.S. at 467, 117 S.Ct. 1544. The Court, however, still applied plain error review because of Johnson's failure to object at trial and preserve the error for appeal. Id. Unsurprisingly, a number of federal circuit cases reflect the same practice. [16] Given this backdrop of precedent we believe that our approach regulating the retroactive application of a new rule to cases pending on direct appeal through the application of the rules governing appellate procedure is entirely consistent with the dictates of Griffith. As such, we agree with the State that it is entirely possible for defendants to have waived or forfeited their ability to appeal their sentence on Blakely grounds.
The State urges us to declare Smylie's claim forfeited because he failed to lodge an objection at his sentencing hearing that his right to trial by jury was denied when the trial court found aggravating circumstances and imposed an enhanced sentence either generally or specifically based on Apprendi.  (Resp. Pet. Transfer at 4.) The State further stresses that Blakely based his `exceptional' sentence claim on Apprendi just as Smylie should have if he found his sentence objectionable. (Resp. Pet. Transfer at 4-5.) The State rightly points out that a claim is generally considered forfeited if it is not objected to at trial, see Bruno v. State, 774 N.E.2d 880 (Ind.2002), and it is certainly correct that Smylie could have objected on Apprendi or Sixth Amendment grounds at the time the trial court convened for the sentencing hearing. Because Blakely represents a new rule that was sufficiently novel that it would not have been generally predicted, much less envisioned to invalidate part of Indiana's sentencing structure, requiring a defendant or counsel to have prognosticated the outcome of Blakely or of today's decision would be unjust. This is the same approach taken by the Seventh Circuit in several recent decisions. In United States v. Pree, 384 F.3d 378 (7th Cir.2004), the court noted that Pree did not address to this court, nor can we find evidence in the record to indicate, that she addressed before the district court the constitutionality of her sentencing enhancement. Id. at 396. Despite this failure to raise an objection to her sentence at either the trial court or before the court of appeals, the Seventh Circuit nevertheless stated that [g]iven the precedent in this circuit prior to Blakely, we think it would be unfair to characterize Ms. Pree as having waived a challenge to the validity of her sentencing enhancement. Id. Likewise, the panel in United States v. Henningsen, 387 F.3d 585 (7th Cir.2004), concluded that the failure to object to a sentence on constitutional grounds did not constitute forfeiture of the Blakely issue for appeal. [17] The court noted that Henningsen's challenge during sentencing and in his brief on appeal did not extend to the constitutionality of the enhancements. Id. at 591. However, while such failure to object would ordinarily constitute forfeiture, the court took note of the fact that Henningsen: made notice of the Blakely ... [decision] in a subsequent filing and raised the issue during argument. In light of the uncertainity surrounding this issue and the questionable constitutionality of Henningsen's sentencing enhancement, we do not find that Hennignsen has waived his right to challenge the validity of the district court's sentencing enhancement. [18] We conclude that it is appropriate to be rather liberal in approaching whether an appellant and her lawyer have adequately preserved and raised a Blakely issue. A very tough Blakely preservation rule would prompt practitioners to fill trial time and appellate briefs with all imaginable contentions, contrary to the general advice that it is good practice to focus on the most viable issues. It would also drastically alter the burden imposed on counsel as to what constitutes effective assistance to their clients. As we said in Fulmer v. State, 523 N.E.2d 754 (Ind.1988), An attorney is not required to anticipate changes in the law and object accordingly in order to be considered effective. Id. at 757-58. As we suggested above, a trial lawyer or an appellate lawyer would not be ineffective for proceeding without adding a Blakely claim before Blakely was decided. Consequently, we do not deem the failure to raise a Sixth Amendment objection to the trial court as it proceeded through sentencing to constitute forfeiture of a Blakely issue for purposes of appellate review. Nevertheless, it does not ask too much that a criminal defendant have contested his or her sentence on appeal, even if the Blakely element of that contest is added later, as it has been by Smylie. Thus, we regard defendants such as Smylie who sought sentence relief from the Court of Appeals based on arbitrariness or unreasonableness (Appellant's Br. at 3), and who added a Blakely claim by amendment or on petition to transfer as having adequately presented the issue of the constitutionality of their sentence under Blakely. Defendants who have appealed without raising any complaint at all about the propriety of their sentence have arguably made the sort of knowing and intelligent decision regarding their appeal that is required for waiver to exist. Thus, those defendants who have not raised objections to their sentences should be deemed to have at least forfeited, and likely waived, the issue for review.
First, as a new rule of constitutional procedure, we will apply Blakely retroactively to all cases on direct review at the time Blakely was announced. Second, a defendant need not have objected at trial in order to raise a Blakely claim on appeal inasmuch as not raising a Blakely claim before its issuance would fall within the range of effective lawyering. Third, those defendants who did not appeal their sentence at all will have forfeited any Blakely claim.