Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-13-03548/USCOURTS-ca7-13-03548-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Richard E. Crayton
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 13-3548

RICHARD E. CRAYTON,

Petitioner-Appellant,

v.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Respondent-Appellee.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Western District of Wisconsin.

No. 13-cv-552-bbc — Barbara B. Crabb, Judge.

____________________

ARGUED JANUARY 22, 2015 — DECIDED JUNE 25, 2015

____________________

Before EASTERBROOK, MANION, and WILLIAMS, Circuit 

Judges.

EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge. Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 

U.S. 466 (2000), holds that facts increasing a criminal defendant’s maximum permissible sentence must be established, 

beyond a reasonable doubt, to the satisfaction of the trier of 

fact (a jury unless the defendant agrees to a bench trial or 

formally admits the facts). Harris v. United States, 536 U.S. 

545 (2002), holds that facts increasing the minimum permisCase: 13-3548 Document: 30 Filed: 06/25/2015 Pages: 21
2 No. 13-3548

sible sentence may be found by a judge on the preponderance of the evidence. But Alleyne v. United States, 133 S. Ct. 

2151 (2013), overrules Harris and holds that facts controlling 

both minimum and maximum sentences are in the jury’s 

province and covered by the reasonable-doubt standard. 

Richard Crayton, whose sentence became final between Harris and Alleyne, contends that Alleyne’s rule applies retroactively on collateral review.

A jury convicted Crayton of distributing heroin. The indictment alleged that Nicole Hedges died from using Crayton’s product, which if true would increase the minimum 

sentence (though not constitute a new offense), but the jury 

could not decide unanimously whether Hedges’s death resulted from Crayton’s heroin. The district judge then found

that it did. Under 21 U.S.C. §841(b)(1)(C) this required the 

sentence to be at least 20 years’ imprisonment, and that’s 

what the district judge imposed. In the absence of the finding that Crayton’s heroin killed Hedges, the statutory range 

would have been 0 to 20 years. The judge stated that she 

thought the statutory floor excessive, but she concluded that 

the law required her to sentence Crayton to 20 years in prison. This court affirmed. United States v. Crayton, No. 11-1820 

(7th Cir. Dec. 27, 2011) (nonprecedential disposition).

Five months after denying Crayton’s petition for certiorari, 132 S. Ct. 2379 (2012), the Supreme Court granted Alleyne’s. 133 S. Ct. 420 (2012). While Alleyne’s case was pending, Crayton filed a petition under 28 U.S.C. §2255. The district court dismissed it without prejudice while waiting for

Alleyne—an improper procedure given the time-and-number 

limits in §2255, see Rhines v. Weber, 544 U.S. 269 (2005); Purvis v. United States, 662 F.3d 939 (7th Cir. 2011), though neiCase: 13-3548 Document: 30 Filed: 06/25/2015 Pages: 21
No. 13-3548 3

ther side protested. When Crayton filed another after the 

Supreme Court issued its decision, the district court held 

that Alleyne does not apply retroactively on collateral review.

(The parties treat Crayton’s current §2255 filing as an initial 

petition, and as timely, despite the district court’s misstep in 

dismissing Crayton’s first petition.)

Every court of appeals that has considered the subject

has concluded that Alleyne is not retroactive on collateral review. Butterworth v. United States, 775 F.3d 459 (1st Cir. 2015); 

United States v. Reyes, 755 F.3d 210, 212–13 (3d Cir. 2014); 

United States v. Olvera, 775 F.3d 726 (5th Cir. 2015); Jeanty v. 

Warden, FCI-Miami, 757 F.3d 1283, 1285–86 (11th Cir. 2014). 

Two other circuits have said the same thing in nonprecedential opinions. Rogers v. United States, 561 F. App’x 440, 443–44

(6th Cir. 2014); United States v. Richards, 567 F. App’x 591, 593 

(10th Cir. 2014) (based on In re Payne, 733 F.3d 1027 (10th Cir. 

2013), which addressed §2255(h)(2)). Our circuit held in 

Simpson v. United States, 721 F.3d 875 (7th Cir. 2013), that Alleyne does not authorize a second or successive collateral attack under §2255(h)(2) because only the Supreme Court can 

declare a decision retroactive for the purpose of that paragraph. Tyler v. Cain, 533 U.S. 656 (2001). But for an initial petition, such as Crayton’s, a district judge or court of appeals 

may make the retroactivity decision, and that’s what Crayton asks us to do. But we conclude that the other circuits are 

correct. Alleyne does not apply retroactively.

Alleyne extends Apprendi from maximum to minimum 

sentences. Only once has the Supreme Court considered 

whether a decision that rests on Apprendi applies retroactively on collateral review. It held in Schriro v. Summerlin, 542 

U.S. 348 (2004), that Ring v. Arizona, 536 U.S. 584 (2002), is 

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not retroactive. Crayton maintains that Schriro is not dispositive against him, because Ring applied Apprendi to change 

(from judge to jury) the identity of the decisionmaker under 

one state’s procedure for capital punishment but did not affect that state’s allocation of the burden of persuasion (the 

state had used the reasonable-doubt standard all along). 

Crayton contends that a decision changing the burden of 

persuasion, as Alleyne did, is entitled to retroactive application under the criteria of Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288 (1989).

The problem with that argument is that Apprendi itself 

changed both the identity of the decisionmaker and the burden of persuasion, but the Supreme Court has not declared

Apprendi to be retroactive—nor has any court of appeals. We 

held in Curtis v. United States, 294 F.3d 841 (7th Cir. 2002), 

that Apprendi is not retroactive under the Teague standard. 

We concluded that two sorts of decisions are applied retroactively: those holding that the law does not (or cannot constitutionally) make particular conduct criminal, and those 

identifying rights “so fundamental that any system of ordered liberty is obliged to include them.” Curtis, 294 F.3d at 

843. And we held that the changes made by Apprendi are not 

in the latter category (no one thinks them to be in the “innocence” category).

Throughout this nation’s history judges have based sentences on findings made by a preponderance of the evidence. Harris held that Apprendi had altered this approach 

only for maximum sentences; Alleyne disagreed and held 

that Apprendi logically implies using the jury (and the reasonable-doubt standard) for minimum sentences too. But

neither Apprendi nor Alleyne concluded that findings on the 

preponderance standard are too unreliable in general to be 

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No. 13-3548 5

the basis of a valid sentence. Judges routinely make findings, 

based on a preponderance of the evidence, that dramatically 

affect the length of criminal sentences.

Consider: even if Crayton’s trial had occurred after Alleyne, and the jury had found unanimously that Crayton’s 

heroin did not kill Hedges, the judge still would have been 

entitled to sentence Crayton to 20 years in prison for distributing heroin after finding by a preponderance of the evidence that his product did kill Hedges. See United States v. 

Watts, 519 U.S. 148 (1997). Alleyne did not overrule Watts or 

recognize a fundamental principle that sentences must rest 

on findings supported by proof beyond a reasonable doubt. 

Instead Alleyne curtails legislatures’ ability to restrict judicial 

discretion in sentencing. A legislature that wants to impose 

compulsory minimum sentences must submit the discretionreducing facts to the jury under the reasonable-doubt standard. That principle is some distance from a rule that defendants are entitled to have all important facts resolved by the 

jury under the reasonable-doubt standard.

It is lawful today for a judge to increase a sentence based 

on facts found on the preponderance standard. “Findings by 

federal district judges are adequate to make reliable decisions about punishment. See Edwards v. United States, 523 

U.S. 511 (1998).” Curtis, 294 F.3d at 844. It follows, as we held 

in Curtis about Apprendi itself, that Alleyne is not so fundamental that it must apply retroactively on collateral review.

Crayton contends that Alleyne should be applied retroactively to his case, even if not to other prisoners’ cases, because the district judge made it clear that she would not 

have given him a 20-year sentence but for her belief (correct 

at the time of sentencing, given Harris) that a minimum senCase: 13-3548 Document: 30 Filed: 06/25/2015 Pages: 21
6 No. 13-3548

tence may be increased by judicial findings. That is to say, in 

the post-Alleyne world the judge still would have found by a 

preponderance of the evidence that Crayton’s heroin killed 

Hedges, but the sentence would have been under 20 years. 

But all this does is show that Alleyne would have affected the 

outcome, had the decision been rendered earlier; it does 

nothing to change the standard for retroactivity. Under 

Teague decisions apply retroactively, or they do not; the Supreme Court has never suggested that new procedural rules 

apply retroactively to some petitioners but not others.

AFFIRMED

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No. 13‐3548 7

WILLIAMS, Circuit Judge, concurring. I am not sure

whether the Supreme Court would find Alleyne to be

retroactively applicable on collateral review. But because we

as appellate courts decide the retroactivity question in the

first instance, absent direction from the Supreme Court,

Ashley v. United States, 266 F.3d 671, 673 (7th Cir. 2001), I

would like to weigh in on both the arguments for

retroactivity and the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence on the

topic. I also take issue with the majority’s reliance on the

non‐retroactivity of an earlier case. That is not dispositive.  

The majority states that if “Nicole Hedges died from

using Crayton’s product,” that finding would increase the

minimum sentence but would “not constitute a new

offense.” Slip op. 2.1 Under Alleyne, that is simply not true.

Alleyne made clear that “[w]hen a finding of fact alters the

legally prescribed punishment so as to aggravate it, the fact

necessarily forms a constituent part of a new offense.” 133 S.

Ct. at 2162 (emphasis added). “Distribution of heroin” is not

the same offense as “distribution of heroin that results in

death.” We know that they are not the same offense but

instead constitute two different offenses because the statutes

provide for different statutory ranges of punishment. See 21

U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(C).  

This misconception has permeated circuit court decisions

addressing whether Apprendi and Alleyne should apply

retroactively, leading many courts to downplay the

significance of these decisions. See, e.g., Sepulveda v. United

States, 330 F.3d 55, 60 (1st Cir. 2003) (“Nothing in the

 

1 Perhaps this statement is a reference to the pre‐Alleyne understanding

of conviction versus sentencing, but later portions of the opinion, see slip

op. 4–5, suggest otherwise.  

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Apprendi decision indicates to us that infringements of its

rule will seriously diminish the accuracy of convictions

(which, by definition, must take place before any such

infringement occurs).”); United States v. Sanchez‐Cervantes,

282 F.3d 664, 671 (9th Cir. 2002) (“The application of Apprendi

only affects the enhancement of a defendant’s sentence once

he or she has already been convicted beyond a reasonable

doubt.”); Goode v. United States, 305 F.3d 378, 385 (6th Cir.

2002) (“The accuracy that is improved by the Apprendi

requirement is in the better imposition of a proper sentence.

In contrast, the accuracy that is improved by the rule of

Gideon involves the basic determination of the defendant’s

guilt or innocence.”). I cannot subscribe to this view. First,

Apprendi and Alleyne are not about sentencing. They are

about the accurate determination of a defendant’s guilt of a

particular offense. If Apprendi was not clear on this point,

Alleyne clarified it. 133 S. Ct. at 2160 (stating that “because

the legally prescribed range is the penalty affixed to [a]

crime,” a fact that increases either end of the penalty range

“produces a new penalty and constitutes an ingredient of the

offense”). Second, that we, along with other circuits, found

Apprendi to not be retroactive is not dispositive of the

question of whether Alleyne is retroactive. One reason we

know that is because the Supreme Court has told us that

Gideon v. Wainwright would be retroactive, Saffle v. Parks, 494

U.S. 484, 495 (1990), without indicating that any of Gideon’s

antecedents—like Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U.S. 458 (1938) or

Powell v. Alabama, 287 U.S. 45 (1932)—would be retroactive.  

I begin with a discussion of the Supreme Court’s

retroactivity jurisprudence, which the majority does not

address. The only part of the majority’s opinion that appears

to reference any court’s standard for retroactivity is a citation

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No. 13‐3548 9

to our own decision in Curtis v. United States, 294 F.3d 841

(7th Cir. 2002). Slip op. 4. The standard from the Supreme

Court is that procedural rules must be “implicit in the

concept of ordered liberty” (among other things) in order to

be retroactively applicable. Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288, 307

(1989). However, Curtis framed the question as whether the

rules are “so fundamental that any system of ordered liberty

is obliged to include them.” 294 F.3d at 843 (emphasis

added). The majority repeats this language from Curtis. The

difference in phrasing may seem small, but the Supreme

Court has indicated that a rule need not be utilized by every

criminal justice system in order to be implicit in the concept

of ordered liberty in the United States. See Gideon v.

Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335, 344 (1963) (“The right of one

charged with crime to counsel may not be deemed

fundamental and essential to fair trials in some countries,

but it is in ours.”).  

Under Teague, a new rule can be retroactive to cases on

collateral review only if it falls into one of two narrow

exceptions to the general rule of nonretroactivity. 489 U.S. at

311–13. Of relevance here is the second Teague exception for

new rules of criminal procedure. New rules of procedure

generally do not apply retroactively to cases that became

final before the new rule was announced, unless the new

rule is “a watershed rule of criminal procedure implicating

the fundamental fairness and accuracy of the criminal

proceeding.” Whorton v. Bockting, 549 U.S. 406, 416 (2007). To

qualify as watershed, a new rule must meet two

requirements. “Infringement of the rule must seriously

diminish the likelihood of obtaining an accurate conviction

and the rule must alter our understanding of the bedrock

procedural elements essential to the fairness of a

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proceeding.” Tyler v. Cain, 533 U.S. 656, 665 (2001). In my

view, Alleyne meets these requirements.  

Alleyne applied a fundamental principle that dates back

at least to our nation’s founding. It has long been established

that the Constitution “protects the accused against

conviction except upon proof beyond a reasonable doubt of

every fact necessary to constitute the crime with which he is

charged.” In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358, 364 (1970). This right to

be convicted beyond a reasonable doubt is a “historically

grounded right[] of our system, developed to safeguard men

from dubious and unjust convictions.” Brinegar v. United

States, 338 U.S. 160, 174 (1949). That the government must

prove beyond a reasonable doubt every element of an

offense is “an ancient and honored aspect of our criminal

justice system.” Victor v. Nebraska, 511 U.S. 1, 5 (1994).

The reasonable‐doubt standard “plays a vital role in the

American scheme of criminal procedure.” Cage v. Louisiana,

498 U.S. 39, 39–40 (1990) (quoting Winship, 397 U.S. at 363).

“Among other things, it is a prime instrument for reducing

the risk of convictions resting on factual error.” Cage, 498

U.S. at 40. The reasonable‐doubt standard implicates the

fundamental fairness and accuracy of criminal proceedings

because “a person accused of a crime would be at a severe

disadvantage, a disadvantage amounting to a lack of

fundamental fairness, if he could be adjudged guilty and

imprisoned for years on the strength of the same evidence as

would suffice in a civil case.” Winship, 397 U.S. at 363. “[U]se

of the reasonable‐doubt standard is indispensable to

command the respect and confidence of the community in

applications of the criminal law. It is critical that the moral

force of the criminal law not be diluted by a standard of

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proof that leaves people in doubt whether innocent men are

being condemned.” Id. at 364. In fact, the Supreme Court has

said that the reasonable‐doubt requirement is a basic

protection “without which a criminal trial cannot reliably

serve its function.” Sullivan v. Louisiana, 508 U.S. 275, 281

(1993).  

The requirement that every element of a crime—defined

as every fact that changes the statutory penalty range,

Alleyne, 133 S. Ct. at 2158—be proven beyond a reasonable

doubt improves the accuracy of the fact‐finding process,

because it reduces the risk that a person guilty of one crime

might be convicted of a more serious, and separate, crime of

which he is innocent. In fact, the reasonable‐doubt standard

is the “prime instrument” for reducing such risk. Cage, 498

U.S. at 40. In my view, the “beyond a reasonable doubt”

standard for a criminal conviction goes to the heart of

fundamental fairness and accuracy and lowering the

standard for a criminal conviction to “preponderance of the

evidence” increases the risk of an inaccurate conviction.

Factfinding based upon preponderance of the evidence,

rather than the reasonable‐doubt standard, seriously

diminishes accuracy such that there is an impermissibly

large risk of an inaccurate conviction.  

As to the second requirement for a watershed rule,

Alleyne altered our understanding of the bedrock procedural

elements essential to the fairness of a proceeding by

establishing a new class of facts that constitute the “crime”

and thus must be found by the jury beyond a reasonable

doubt. We have long known that elements of the crime must

be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. But there has been

much debate about how to define “elements” versus

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“sentencing factors.” Alleyne changed our understanding of

what constitutes an “element” of a crime. “Much turns on

the determination that a fact is an element of an offense

rather than a sentencing consideration, given that elements

must be charged in the indictment, submitted to a jury, and

proven by the Government beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Jones v. United States, 526 U.S. 227, 232 (1999).  

Allowing Crayton to be convicted of “distribution of

heroin that resulted in death” by a mere preponderance of

the evidence increased the risk of his conviction resting on a

factual error. The reasonable‐doubt standard “provides

concrete substance for the presumption of innocence—that

bedrock axiomatic and elementary principle whose

enforcement lies at the foundation of the administration of

our criminal law.” Winship, 397 U.S. at 363. Failing to apply

Alleyne (and Apprendi) retroactively creates the “troubling

possibility that a defendant has been convicted of conduct

that constitutes a less serious offense than the one for which

he is sentenced.” Coleman v. United States, 329 F.3d 77, 93 (2d

Cir. 2003) (Parker, Jr., J., concurring in the judgment). Many

judges seem untroubled by this possibility. I am not one of

them. I do not think the fact that a person is guilty of one

crime means that he has a lesser interest in, or right to, a

determination of his guilt of a different offense beyond a

reasonable doubt.

Two Supreme Court decisions suggest that new rules

which implicate the reasonable‐doubt standard like Alleyne

should be applied retroactively. In In re Winship, the

Supreme Court stated “[l]est there remain any doubt about

the constitutional stature of the reasonable‐doubt standard,

we explicitly hold that the Due Process Clause protects the

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accused against conviction except upon proof beyond a

reasonable doubt of every fact necessary to constitute the

crime with which he is charged.” 397 U.S. at 364. In Ivan V. v.

City of New York, 407 U.S. 203 (1972), a pre‐Teague case, the

Court unanimously made In re Winship retroactively

applicable on collateral review. In Hankerson v. North

Carolina, 432 U.S. 233 (1977), another pre‐Teague case, the

Court (again unanimously) found that Mullaney v. Wilbur,

421 U.S. 684 (1975)—which established the rule that the state

must establish all elements of a criminal offense beyond

reasonable doubt and invalidated presumptions that shift

the burden of proving elements to the defendant—was

retroactively applicable.  

The majority writes that neither Apprendi nor Alleyne

concluded that findings based on the preponderance

standard are too unreliable in general to be the basis of a

valid sentence. I do not quarrel with that statement. My

quarrel is with the characterization of Alleyne as a decision

about sentencing, rather than guilt. “Each crime has different

elements and a defendant can be convicted only if the jury

has found each element of the crime of conviction.” Alleyne,

133 S. Ct. at 2162. The fundamental question here is guilty or

not guilty of what? Crayton was found guilty of “distribution

of heroin” beyond a reasonable doubt. But he was not found

guilty of “distribution of heroin that resulted in death”

beyond a reasonable doubt. These are two different offenses.

As the Supreme Court said in Alleyne, “the core crime and

the fact triggering the mandatory minimum sentence

together constitute a new, aggravated crime, each element of

which must be submitted to the jury” and proven beyond a

reasonable doubt. Id. at 2161. Facts that increase a

mandatory statutory minimum are “part of the substantive

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offense.” Id. “When a finding of fact alters the legally

prescribed punishment so as to aggravate it, the fact

necessarily forms a constituent part of a new offense.” Id. at

2162. The accuracy improved by Alleyne is not just in the

proper sentence. It is in the determination of guilt or

innocence with respect to the offense of distribution of

heroin that resulted in death.  

While the majority mentions Schriro v. Summerlin, 542

U.S. 348 (2004), the holding of that case is of little assistance

in deciding the question here since Schriro was about jury

versus judicial fact finding where critically, the standard of

proof of beyond a reasonable doubt remained unchanged.

Furthermore, even if Alleyne was about sentencing, Schriro

“leaves little doubt that the ‘watershed rule’ can apply to a

procedural rule that only affects sentencing.” Lloyd v. United

States, 407 F.3d 608, 614 (3d Cir. 2005). We must look at

whether factfinding based upon a preponderance of the

evidence “so seriously diminishes accuracy that there is an

impermissibly large risk of punishing conduct the law does

not reach.” Schriro, 542 U.S. at 355–56. That it does. Because

the reasonable‐doubt standard is the prime instrument to

ensure accuracy of convictions, allowing a factfinder to make

determinations based upon a preponderance of the

evidence, rather than beyond a reasonable doubt, does

seriously diminish accuracy.  

The majority also writes that post‐Alleyne, “the judge still

would have been entitled to sentence Crayton to 20 years in

prison for distributing heroin after finding by a

preponderance of the evidence that his product did kill

Hedges,” citing generally United States v. Watts, 519 U.S. 148

(1997). Slip op. 5. However, being entitled to do something

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and being required to do something are two very different

things. And the argument is a red herring because the judge

was entitled to sentence Crayton to 20 years with or without a

finding that his product resulted in death. After all, the

statutory range for “distribution of heroin” was 0 to 20 years.

She clearly did not want to sentence Crayton so high, but she

was bound to, based upon a finding by a preponderance of

the evidence that death resulted. Ironically, the judge could

not have sentenced Crayton to 241 months (20 years and 1

month), because that sentence would have violated Apprendi.

The preponderance of the evidence finding required her to

sentence Crayton to exactly 20 years.

The majority further writes that “[t]hat principle” (which

I assume is a reference to the holding of Alleyne) “is some

distance from a rule that defendants are entitled to have all

important facts resolved by the jury under the reasonable‐

doubt standard.” Slip op. 5. I am not sure what it means by

the concept of “important facts.” But the rule of Alleyne is

that defendants are entitled to have all facts that increase a

statutory minimum or maximum resolved by a jury under

the reasonable doubt standard. So if by “important facts” it

means “facts that increase a statutory minimum or

maximum,” it is wrong.  

Having considered the importance of the “beyond a

reasonable doubt” standard and the ways in which Alleyne

altered our understanding of this bedrock procedural

element, I now address what is pragmatically the real

problem: the fact that the Supreme Court has never found a

new rule of criminal procedure to fall within the second

Teague exception. It has come close though. On more than

one occasion, the Court has been one justice shy of finding

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new rules of criminal procedure to be retroactively

applicable. See, e.g., Schriro v. Summerlin, 542 U.S. 348 (2004);

O’Dell v. Netherland, 521 U.S. 151 (1997); Sawyer v. Smith, 497

U.S. 227 (1990); see also Tyler v. Cain, 533 U.S. 656 (2001) (one

justice shy of finding that the Court had already made Cage

retroactive in Sullivan).  

What the Court said is that Gideon would be such a rule,

Saffle, 494 U.S. at 495, and so I turn to Gideon for guidance.

See Gray v. Netherland, 518 U.S. 152, 170 (1996) (referring to

the Gideon rule as a “paradigmatic example” of the second

Teague exception).  

With the passage of time, I hope we do not lose sight of

the context in which Gideon was decided. Gideon was

remarkable. But its holding did not come out of nowhere.

Some courts have described Gideon as cutting “a new rule

from whole cloth,” see Butterworth v. United States, 775 F.3d

459, 468 (1st Cir. 2015), unlike Apprendi and Alleyne, but I

disagree. A series of other decisions regarding the right to

counsel, due process, and incorporation of the Bill of Rights

to the states led to it—decisions which the Supreme Court

has not suggested would have met the standard for the

watershed rule exception under Teague. Prior to Gideon, the

Supreme Court had determined that the Sixth Amendment

required counsel to be provided to indigent federal

defendants. Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U.S. 458 (1938). It had also

found that the Due Process Clause required states to provide

counsel to indigent defendants in special circumstances,

Powell v. Alabama, 287 U.S. 45 (1932), which eventually came

to include all capital cases, Hamilton v. Alabama, 368 U.S. 52

(1961), but also encompassed non‐capital cases where the

totality of facts showed circumstances requiring

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appointment of counsel like the personal characteristics or

complexity of the charge made a fair trial unlikely without

appointed counsel, e.g., Betts v. Brady, 316 U.S. 455 (1942).2

The Court had established that it violated due process for a

state to deny a defendant the opportunity to obtain (and the

right to be represented by) counsel of one’s own choosing.

Chandler v. Fretag, 348 U.S. 3, 9 (1954). And it had made other

Bill of Rights guarantees obligatory on the states through the

Fourteenth Amendment, including the Fourth Amendment’s

prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures and the

Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Gideon, 372 U.S. at 342.

Given these precedent cases, it is no wonder that Justice

Clark in his concurrence in Gideon noted that that case “d[id]

no more than erase a distinction which ha[d] no basis in

logic and an increasingly eroded basis in authority.” Gideon,

372 U.S. at 348 (Clark, J., concurring in the result). That

sounds familiar. See Alleyne, 133 S. Ct. at 2160 (citing Justice

Breyer’s concurrence in Harris v. United States, 536 U.S. 545

(2002), which reasoned that facts increasing the minimum

and facts increasing the maximum cannot be distinguished

“‘in terms of logic’”).  

Some circuits have found that “Gideon altered our

understanding of what constitutes basic due process by

 

2 This particular rule—that states must provide counsel to indigent non‐

capital defendants under special circumstances—produced a long series

of Supreme Court decisions, most of which found that the defendant was

entitled to appointed representation under the circumstances. See Moore

v. Michigan, 355 U.S. 155, 159 n.7 (1957) (citing twenty‐six Supreme Court

cases discussing the principles which determine the extent to which the

constitutional right to counsel is secured in a state prosecution).

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establishing that representation by counsel is fundamental to

a fair trial,” while Apprendi and Alleyne “merely clarified and

extended the scope of a pre‐existing right—the right to have

all convictions supported by proof beyond a reasonable

doubt.” United States v. Mora, 293 F.3d 1213, 1219 (10th Cir.

2002). I cannot help but sense some revisionist history. Prior

to Gideon, Powell had already stated that the right to counsel

was fundamental. 287 U.S. at 68. Gideon merely clarified and

extended the scope of a pre‐existing right because the right

to counsel previously existed in federal prosecutions, special

circumstances, and state inmates prosecuted for capital

offenses.  

The Supreme Court and circuit courts alike have found

that new procedural rules, despite arguably being aimed at

improving the accuracy of trial or promoting the objectives

of fairness and accuracy, do not meet the Teague standard

because they are not as “sweeping” as Gideon. See e.g., O’Dell,

521 U.S. at 167; United States v. Mandanici, 205 F.3d 519, 528–

29 (2d Cir. 2000). It seems to me that the “sweeping” nature

of Gideon is not so much a reflection of how many cases it

would have applied to retroactively, but instead a statement

about how many cases in which it would be a relevant

consideration going forward. The Supreme Court said that

Gideon was sweeping because it “established an affirmative

right to counsel in all felony cases.” O’Dell, 521 U.S. at 167.

But the right to counsel had already been established for all

federal defendants and for state defendants under certain

circumstances. Also, because of Johnson and the fact that

most states provided counsel to indigent defendants as a

matter of state law prior to Gideon, relatively few defendants

actually needed to be retried as a result of Gideon’s holding.

Most indigent defendants were already being provided with

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counsel prior to Gideon.

3 But going forward, an assertion of

the federal constitutional right to counsel became a factor in

every criminal case. Similarly, many rules have been found

to be not as “sweeping” as Gideon because they simply are

not a factor in a significant number of cases. For example,

the rule from Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004) is

only a consideration where the government seeks to admit

testimonial hearsay. Whorton, 549 U.S. at 419; see also O’Dell,

521 U.S. at 167 (right of rebuttal afforded to defendants in a

“limited class of capital cases” was not as “sweeping” as

Gideon). That just does not come up in every criminal case.

But how to define the crime (the issue in Alleyne) does. It is

just as sweeping as Gideon.  

In many ways, Alleyne is similar to Gideon in that it is the

culminating case in a long‐running debate regarding a

fundamental right. Gideon settled the debate of when our

Constitution requires that the government provide counsel

to indigent defendants. Alleyne settled the debate of how a

“crime” is defined. Each crime is composed of different

elements and a fact is an element of a crime when it alters

the legally prescribed punishment. 133 S. Ct. at 2162. It

cannot be a sufficient justification that Alleyne is not

 

3 Even prior to Johnson, in 1930, the Supreme Court noted that “[t]hanks

to the humane policy of the modern criminal law”, a criminal defendant

“may have counsel furnished him by the state.” Patton v. United States,

281 U.S. 276, 308 (1930). In 1955, at least thirty‐four states provided

counsel to indigent defendants in all felony prosecutions. William M.

Beaney, THE RIGHT TO COUNSEL IN AMERICAN COURTS 84–85 (1955). In

fact, “by the time Gideon was decided, only five states had a definite

policy against appointing counsel in noncapital cases.” William M.

Beaney, The Right to Counsel: Past, Present, and Future, 49 Va. L. Rev. 1150,

1156 (1963).  

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retroactive because it has close analytic ties to Apprendi

(which is not retroactive), because Gideon meets the Teague

standard, but the Supreme Court has not suggested that

Johnson or Powell, to which Gideon has close analytic ties,

would also meet the Teague standard. Apprendi does not need

to be retroactive in order for Alleyne to be retroactive.  

Obviously, applying Alleyne retroactively would mean

that the holding of Apprendi would be applied retroactively

as well. But the same is true of Gideon and its predecessors.

Applying Gideon retroactively necessarily entails that the

holdings of Johnson and Powell are applied retroactively. A

rule that counsel must be provided to all indigent

defendants in felony prosecutions subsumes the rule that

counsel must be provided to indigent state defendants in

special circumstances.

Here, the district judge was permitted to convict Crayton

of “distribution of heroin that resulted in death” in the in‐

between range of equal to or greater than a preponderance

of the evidence, but less than beyond a reasonable doubt.

While the district court did not state that she would not have

found death resulting beyond a reasonable doubt, the

government said at oral argument that if the judge had said

on the record that she found that death resulted by a

preponderance and also explicitly said she did not find it

beyond a reasonable doubt, the government’s position

would be the same. Many cases have tried and failed to have

new procedural rules declared retroactive by the Supreme

Court. But in my opinion, none of these rules were as

essential to ordered liberty as the rule that criminal

defendants must be convicted beyond a reasonable doubt.

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All that said, I recognize that the Supreme Court has

never found a new rule of criminal procedure to meet the

Teague standard, so I concur in the judgment here. However I

hope that the Supreme Court will find in its retroactivity

jurisprudence space on the Gideon pedestal for other new

rules, particularly those so important to our criminal justice

system as the reasonable‐doubt standard.  

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