Title: Constitutional Retroactivity in Criminal Procedure
Abstract: INTRODUCTIONThe doctrine of constitutional retroactivity has since its inception lived in the margins of criminal procedure. It was born in the Supreme Court's 1989 decision Teague v. Lane.1 Teague set forth narrow conditions under which constitutional change in the rules of criminal procedure would have the dramatic consequence of requiring the retrial, resentencing, or release of any prisoner whose conviction or became final before that new protection was announced.2 This extraordinary kind of due rule-whose repercussions reach farther than any in our criminal or constitutional law, so rare that one like it has never been recognized-is what the Supreme Court has referred to as a watershed.3The Court's recent decision in Montgomery v. Louisiana4 brought into sharp relief the Court's reluctance to apply that rule directly. Henry Montgomery had been in prison since 1963, sentenced to die there under the mandatory life sentence he received for a murder conviction when he was seventeen.5 Nearly fifty years later, the Court, in Miller v. Alabama,6 established a new rule that the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment entitles juveniles to individualized sentencing for life incarceration without the possibility of parole.7 In Montgomery, the Court applied that rule to individuals like the petitioner, whose convictions and sentences had been finalized (even long) before its 2012 announcement in Miller. That rule's retroactive application means that, in states like Louisiana, Michigan, and Pennsylvania with significant numbers of juvenile homicide offenders, more than 1000 prisoners once condemned for life must now be considered for parole. Hamstrung by its previous refusals to recognize newly announced rules as watersheds, however, the Court was forced to reach this result by rewriting Miller's procedural mandate as substantive.8Under the watershed doctrine, a new due right9 applies to final convictions only when that protection manifestly improves the accuracy of convictions and does no less than alter our understanding of the bedrock procedural elements.10 The retroactive application of these so-called watershed rules benefits not only defendants facing trial or appealing guilty verdicts, but also those who have exhausted their appeals.11 A defendant whose conviction and sentence has become final can invoke this doctrine in any habeas proceeding or other suit for post-conviction relief.12 When backdating that due reform casts doubt on whether a prisoner's guilty verdict was accurate or whether his trial was fair, the court must order a retrial or exonerate the defendant immediately.13The Supreme Court has so narrowed such rules, however, that the doctrine is highly exceptional.14 Over the past quarter-century since Teague, the Court has refused to confer watershed status on even one new rule of constitutional criminal procedure among the dozens it has announced.15 The only rule that would have qualified, the Court has said, is the right to assistance of counsel.16 This rule was first announced in Gideon v. Wainwright,17 long before Teague, and the Court has characterized this rule's unique centrality to basic due process as unlikely . . . to emerge again.18 Accordingly, not a single prisoner since Teague has, by judgment of the Supreme Court, benefited from a constitutional reform that took hold after direct review of his case, no matter how profound that reform had been and whether it would have enhanced the conviction's accuracy if it were to apply at trial or on appeal. Those reforms offer no grounds for relief after a conviction becomes final under the verboten due regime that has, if even one day later, been authoritatively declared constitutionally deficient.It is hardly surprising that the Montgomery Court, in declaring Miller retroactive, refused to classify that rule's individualized sentencing guarantee as a watershed. …
Publication Year: 2016
Publication Date: 2016-06-01
Language: en
Type: article
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