Judge Cassell, a brainy, conservative former law professor, surveyed the maximum sentences for other federal crimes. Hijacking an airplane: 25 years. Terrorist bombing intending to kill a bystander: 20 years. Second-degree murder: 14 years. Kidnapping: 13 years. Rape of a 10-year-old: 11 years. He noted that Mr. Angelos would face a far shorter sentence in the courts of any state. In Utah, prosecutors estimate that he would receive five to seven years.

If the Supreme Court's Blakely decision renders the Guidelines unconstitutional, what comes next might be worse. Congress may enact mandatory minimum penalties for many more offenses.

Ronald H. Weich, a former counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee who opposes mandatory minimums, said [mandatory minimums] had a political constituency. "There is a real danger," Mr. Weich said, "that we're heading back to mandatory minimums if guidelines are unconstitutional." The Justice Department supports mandatory minimums, said Monica Goodling, a spokeswoman.

Meanwhile, Mr. Angelos is arguing the sentence would be cruel and unusual punishment, an argument that has not met with great success in the past:

Mr. Angelos's lawyers and the 29 former judges and prosecutors argue that the mandatory sentence in his case amounts to a cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by the Eighth Amendment. The Supreme Court has not been receptive to similar arguments in cases involving three-strikes laws and a first-time offender given life without parole for large-scale cocaine distribution.

Cassell, who has previously ruled that Blakely invalidates the federal sentencing guidelines, may go along. He says there is a difference between tough guidelines and tough mandatory minimums:

In a Stanford Law Review article in April, he wrote that "the federal sentencing guidelines, while tough, are not 'too' tough." But mandatory minimums, he wrote, "can lead to possible injustices."