(Slip Opinion) OCTOBER TERM, 2020 1 

Syllabus 

NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is 

being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued. 

The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been 

prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader. 

See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337. 

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES 

Syllabus 

EDWARDS v. VANNOY, WARDEN 

CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR 

THE FIFTH CIRCUIT 

No. 19–5807. Argued November 30, 2020—Decided May 17, 2021 

In 2007, a Louisiana jury found petitioner Thedrick Edwards guilty of 

armed robbery, rape, and kidnapping. At the time, Louisiana law permitted non-unanimous jury verdicts if at least 10 of the 12 jurors found 

the defendant guilty. In Edwards’s case, 11 of 12 jurors returned a 

guilty verdict as to some crimes, and 10 of 12 jurors returned a guilty

verdict as to others. After Edwards’s conviction became final on direct 

review, Edwards filed a federal habeas corpus petition, arguing that

the non-unanimous jury verdict violated his constitutional right to a

unanimous jury. The District Court rejected Edwards’s claim as foreclosed by Apodaca v. Oregon, 406 U. S. 404, and the Fifth Circuit denied a certificate of appealability. While Edwards’s petition for a writ 

of certiorari was pending, the Court repudiated Apodoca and held that 

a state jury must be unanimous to convict a criminal defendant of a 

serious offense. Ramos v. Louisiana, 590 U. S. ___. Edwards now argues that the Ramos jury-unanimity rule applies retroactively on federal collateral review. 

Held: The Ramos jury-unanimity rule does not apply retroactively on 

federal collateral review. Pp. 5–20.

(a) A new rule of criminal procedure applies to cases on direct review, even if the defendant’s trial has already concluded. But the 

Court has stated that new rules of criminal procedure ordinarily do not 

apply retroactively on federal collateral review. The Court has stated 

that a new procedural rule will apply retroactively on federal collateral

review only if the new rule constitutes a “watershed” rule of criminal

procedure. Teague v. Lane, 489 U. S. 288, 311 (plurality opinion). 

When the Teague Court first articulated that “watershed” exception, 

however, the Court stated that it was “unlikely” that such watershed 

“components of basic due process have yet to emerge.” Id., at 313. And 
 

 

 

 

2 EDWARDS v. VANNOY 

Syllabus 

in the 32 years since Teague, the Court has never found that any new 

procedural rule actually satisfies the purported exception. Pp. 5–7.

(b) To determine whether Ramos applies retroactively on federal collateral review, the Court must first ask whether Ramos announced a 

new rule of criminal procedure and, if so, whether that rule falls within

an exception for watershed rules of criminal procedure that apply retroactively on federal collateral review. The Court concludes that Ramos announced a new rule and that the jury-unanimity rule announced by Ramos does not apply retroactively on federal collateral 

review. Pp. 8–14. 

(1) The Ramos jury-unanimity rule is new because it was not “dictated by precedent existing at the time the defendant’s conviction became final,” Teague, 489 U. S., at 301, or “apparent to all reasonable

jurists” at that time, Lambrix v. Singletary, 520 U. S. 518, 528. On the 

contrary, before Ramos, many courts interpreted Apodaca to allow for 

non-unanimous jury verdicts in state criminal trials. And the Ramos 

Court expressly repudiated Apodaca. Pp. 8–10. 

(2) The new rule announced in Ramos does not qualify as a “watershed” procedural rule that applies retroactively on federal collateral 

review. In an attempt to distinguish Ramos from the long line of cases

where the Court has declined to retroactively apply new procedural 

rules, Edwards emphasizes three aspects of Ramos: (i) the significance 

of the jury-unanimity right; (ii) Ramos’s reliance on the original meaning of the Constitution; and (iii) the effect of Ramos in preventing racial discrimination in the jury process. But the Court has refused to 

retroactively apply other momentous cases with similar attributes. In 

DeStefano v. Woods, 392 U. S. 631, the Court declined to retroactively 

apply Duncan v. Louisiana, 395 U. S. 145, even though Duncan established the jury right itself. In Whorton v. Bockting, 549 U. S. 406, the 

Court declined to retroactively apply Crawford v. Washington, 541 

U. S. 36, even though Crawford relied on the original meaning of the

Sixth Amendment to restrict the use of hearsay evidence against criminal defendants. And in Allen v. Hardy, 478 U. S. 255 (per curiam),

the Court declined to retroactively apply Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U. S. 

79, even though Batson held that state prosecutors may not discriminate on the basis of race when exercising individual peremptory challenges. There is no good rationale for treating Ramos differently from 

Duncan, Crawford, and Batson. Pp. 10–14.

 (3) Given the Court’s numerous precedents holding that landmark 

and historic decisions announcing new rules of criminal procedure do

not apply retroactively on federal collateral review, the Court acknowledges that the watershed exception is moribund and that no new rules 

of criminal procedure can satisfy the purported exception for watershed rules. Continuing to articulate a theoretical exception that never 
 

 

 

 

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Syllabus 

actually applies in practice offers false hope to defendants, distorts the

law, misleads judges, and wastes the resources of defense counsel, 

prosecutors, and courts. Moreover, no one can reasonably rely on an

exception that is non-existent in practice, so no reliance interests can

be affected by forthrightly acknowledging reality. The watershed exception must “be regarded as retaining no vitality.” Herrera v. Wyoming, 587 U. S. ___, ___ (slip op., at 11) (internal quotation marks omitted). Pp. 14–15. 

Affirmed. 

KAVANAUGH, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which ROBERTS, 

C. J., THOMAS, ALITO, GORSUCH, and BARRETT, JJ., joined. THOMAS, J., 

filed a concurring opinion, in which GORSUCH, J., joined. GORSUCH, J., 

filed a concurring opinion, in which THOMAS, J., joined. KAGAN, J., filed 

a dissenting opinion, in which BREYER and SOTOMAYOR, JJ., joined. 
 

 

 

_________________ 

_________________ 

Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021) 1 

Opinion of the Court 

NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the 

preliminary print of the United States Reports. Readers are requested to 

notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D. C. 20543, of any typographical or other formal errors, in order that 

corrections may be made before the preliminary print goes to press. 

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES 

No. 19–5807 

THEDRICK EDWARDS, PETITIONER v. 

DARREL VANNOY, WARDEN 

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF 

APPEALS FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT 

[May 17, 2021]

 JUSTICE KAVANAUGH delivered the opinion of the Court. 

Last Term in Ramos v. Louisiana, 590 U. S. ___ (2020), 

this Court held that a state jury must be unanimous to convict a criminal defendant of a serious offense. Ramos repudiated this Court’s 1972 decision in Apodaca v. Oregon, 406 

U. S. 404, which had allowed non-unanimous juries in state 

criminal trials. The question in this case is whether the 

new rule of criminal procedure announced in Ramos applies

retroactively to overturn final convictions on federal collateral review. Under this Court’s retroactivity precedents,

the answer is no. 

This Court has repeatedly stated that a decision announcing a new rule of criminal procedure ordinarily does

not apply retroactively on federal collateral review. See 

Teague v. Lane, 489 U. S. 288, 310 (1989) (plurality opinion); see also Linkletter v. Walker, 381 U. S. 618, 639–640, 

and n. 20 (1965). Indeed, in the 32 years since Teague underscored that principle, this Court has announced many 

important new rules of criminal procedure. But the Court 

has not applied any of those new rules retroactively on federal collateral review. See, e.g., Whorton v. Bockting, 549 
 

 

2 EDWARDS v. VANNOY 

Opinion of the Court 

U. S. 406, 421 (2007) (Confrontation Clause rule recognized 

in Crawford v. Washington, 541 U. S. 36 (2004), does not 

apply retroactively). And for decades before Teague, the 

Court also regularly declined to apply new rules retroactively, including on federal collateral review. See, e.g., 

DeStefano v. Woods, 392 U. S. 631, 635 (1968) (per curiam)

(jury-trial rule recognized in Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 

U. S. 145 (1968), does not apply retroactively).

In light of the Court’s well-settled retroactivity doctrine,

we conclude that the Ramos jury-unanimity rule likewise 

does not apply retroactively on federal collateral review.

We therefore affirm the judgment of the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. 

I 

On the night of May 13, 2006, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 

Thedrick Edwards and an accomplice kidnapped Ryan 

Eaton, a student at LSU. As Eaton was getting out of his 

car, Edwards and his accomplice confronted Eaton at gunpoint and forced him back into the car. Edwards and his 

accomplice then jumped into the car with Eaton. They

drove with Eaton to an ATM where they hoped to withdraw

money using Eaton’s card. When they discovered that 

Eaton did not have any money in his account, they drove to 

Eaton’s apartment. Once there, they bound and blindfolded

Eaton, rummaged through his apartment, and took some of 

his belongings to Eaton’s car.

After they were back in the car, Edwards and his accomplice coerced Eaton into arranging a meeting with Eaton’s 

girlfriend. They then drove to the girlfriend’s apartment

and, at gunpoint, forced Eaton to knock on the door. When 

Eaton’s girlfriend opened the door, Edwards and his accomplice rushed inside. Both Edwards and his accomplice were 

armed, and Edwards’s accomplice had his gun drawn. Edwards and his accomplice instructed Eaton, Eaton’s girlfriend, and two other women in the apartment to lie on the 
Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021) 3 

Opinion of the Court 

floor. Edwards then raped one of the women. His accomplice raped another woman. As they left, they grabbed 

some personal property from the apartment. Edwards and 

his accomplice hurried back into Eaton’s car and drove

around the corner. They then abandoned the car and fled.

Two days later, Edwards and his accomplice confronted

another man at gunpoint and forced him to withdraw 

money from an ATM.

Within a day of the second incident, the police collected

substantial evidence implicating Edwards in both episodes. 

The police obtained warrants to search his residence and to

arrest him. The day after the police executed the search

warrant but before an arrest, Edwards turned himself in to 

the police and confessed to his crimes. The police videotaped Edwards’s confession. (The video is part of the joint 

appendix. See supremecourt.gov/media/media.aspx.)

Edwards was indicted in Louisiana state court for armed 

robbery, kidnapping, and rape. Edwards pled not guilty 

and went to trial. Before trial, Edwards moved to suppress

the videotaped confession on the ground that the confession

was involuntary. The trial court denied the suppression 

motion. 

At trial, the jury heard Edwards’s confession and other 

evidence against him, including the testimony of eyewitnesses. The jury convicted Edwards of five counts of armed 

robbery, two counts of kidnapping, and one count of rape. 

At the time, Louisiana law permitted guilty verdicts if at

least 10 of the 12 jurors found the defendant guilty. The 

jury convicted Edwards by an 11-to-1 vote on one of the 

armed robbery counts, the two kidnapping counts, and the 

rape count. The jury convicted Edwards by a 10-to-2 vote

on the four remaining armed robbery counts.

At sentencing, the trial judge stated: “I can say without

hesitation that this is the most egregious case that I’ve had 

before me.” Record 1113. The judge sentenced Edwards to 
 

 

4 EDWARDS v. VANNOY 

Opinion of the Court 

life imprisonment without parole. The Louisiana First Circuit Court of Appeal affirmed the conviction and sentence. 

In March 2011, Edwards’s conviction became final on direct 

review. 

After his conviction became final, Edwards applied for

state post-conviction relief in the Louisiana courts. The 

Louisiana courts denied relief. 

In 2015, Edwards filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the U. S. District Court for the Middle District of

Louisiana. He argued that the non-unanimous jury verdict 

violated his constitutional right to a unanimous jury. The 

District Court rejected that claim as foreclosed by this 

Court’s 1972 decision in Apodaca v. Oregon, 406 U. S. 404. 

In Apodaca, this Court ruled that the Constitution does 

not require unanimous jury verdicts in state criminal trials.

The Apodaca majority consisted of a plurality opinion by

four Justices and an opinion concurring in the judgment by 

Justice Powell. In his opinion, Justice Powell acknowledged that the Sixth Amendment requires a unanimous 

jury in federal criminal trials. 406 U. S., at 371. But in his 

view, the Fourteenth Amendment did not incorporate that

right against the States, meaning that a unanimous jury 

was not constitutionally required in state criminal trials. 

Id., at 373, 376–377. In subsequent years, many federal 

and state courts viewed Justice Powell’s opinion as the controlling opinion from Apodaca. See, e.g., Timbs v. Indiana, 

586 U. S. ___, ___, n. 1 (2019) (slip op., at 3, n. 1); McDonald 

v. Chicago, 561 U. S. 742, 766, n. 14 (2010). 

In Edwards’s case, the District Court likewise followed 

Justice Powell’s opinion from Apodaca and concluded that 

a unanimous jury is not constitutionally required in state

criminal trials. The U. S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit denied a certificate of appealability. 2019 WL 8643258 

(May 20, 2019). Edwards then petitioned for a writ of certiorari in this Court, arguing that the Constitution requires

a unanimous jury in state criminal trials. 
 

 

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Opinion of the Court 

II 

While Edwards’s petition for certiorari was pending, this

Court decided Ramos and rejected Justice Powell’s opinion 

in Apodaca. See Ramos v. Louisiana, 590 U. S. ___ (2020); 

Apodaca v. Oregon, 406 U. S. 404 (1972). The Court held 

that the Fourteenth Amendment incorporates the Sixth

Amendment right to a unanimous jury against the States. 

Therefore, in state court as well as federal court, a jury

must be unanimous to convict a defendant of a serious offense.1 

The Court’s decision in Ramos directly affected Louisiana

and Oregon, which were the only two States that still allowed non-unanimous juries. For those States, this Court’s 

decision in Ramos immediately triggered a pressing question: Does Ramos apply retroactively to overturn final convictions on federal collateral review? We granted certiorari 

in Edwards’s case to decide that question. 590 U. S. ___ 

(2020). We conclude that Ramos does not apply retroactively on federal collateral review. 

A 

A new rule of criminal procedure applies to cases on direct review, even if the defendant’s trial has already concluded. See Griffith v. Kentucky, 479 U. S. 314, 328 (1987). 

But under the habeas corpus statute as interpreted by this

Court, a new rule of criminal procedure ordinarily does not 

apply retroactively to overturn final convictions on federal 

collateral review. See Teague v. Lane, 489 U. S. 288, 310 

(1989) (plurality opinion); Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U. S. 302, 

—————— 1 Ramos does not apply to defendants charged with petty offenses, 

which typically are offenses that carry a maximum prison term of six 

months or less. 590 U. S., at ___, n. 7. (slip op., at 3, n. 7); see also Blanton v. North Las Vegas, 489 U. S. 538, 543 (1989) (defining petty offense). 
 

 

 

6 EDWARDS v. VANNOY 

Opinion of the Court 

313–314 (1989).2 

In stating that new procedural rules ordinarily do not apply retroactively on federal collateral review, Teague reinforced what had already been the Court’s regular practice

for several decades under the retroactivity standard articulated in Linkletter v. Walker, 381 U. S. 618 (1965). Linkletter set forth a balancing test for determining retroactivity.

But even under Linkletter, “new rules that constituted clear 

breaks with the past generally were not given retroactive

effect,” including on federal collateral review. Teague, 489 

U. S., at 304 (plurality opinion).

As the Court has explained, applying “constitutional 

rules not in existence at the time a conviction became final 

seriously undermines the principle of finality which is essential to the operation of our criminal justice system.” Id., 

at 309. Here, for example, applying Ramos retroactively

would potentially overturn decades of convictions obtained

in reliance on Apodaca. Moreover, conducting scores of retrials years after the crimes occurred would require significant state resources. See Teague, 489 U. S., at 310 (plurality opinion). And a State may not be able to retry some

defendants at all because of “lost evidence, faulty memory, 

and missing witnesses.” Allen v. Hardy, 478 U. S. 255, 260 

(1986) (per curiam) (internal quotation marks omitted). 

When previously convicted perpetrators of violent crimes go

free merely because the evidence needed to conduct a retrial

has become stale or is no longer available, the public suffers, as do the victims. See United States v. Mechanik, 475 

—————— 2Before Griffith v. Kentucky, 479 U. S. 314 (1987), the Court sometimes would decline to apply new procedural rules even to cases on direct 

review. See, e.g., Johnson v. New Jersey, 384 U. S. 719, 721 (1966) (rule 

announced in Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436 (1966), applies only to

cases in which the trial began after the date of the Miranda decision). 

Griffith ended that practice and declared that new rules apply to all cases

on direct review. 
Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021) 7 

Opinion of the Court 

U. S. 66, 72 (1986). Even when the evidence can be reassembled, conducting retrials years later inflicts substantial

pain on crime victims who must testify again and endure

new trials. In this case, the victims of the robberies, kidnappings, and rapes would have to relive their trauma and 

testify again, 15 years after the crimes occurred. 

Put simply, the “costs imposed upon the States by retroactive application of new rules of constitutional law on habeas corpus thus generally far outweigh the benefits of this

application.” Sawyer v. Smith, 497 U. S. 227, 242 (1990)

(internal quotation marks and alteration omitted). For that 

reason, the Court has repeatedly stated that new rules of 

criminal procedure ordinarily do not apply retroactively on

federal collateral review. 

The Court has identified only one possible exception to

that principle. The Court has stated that a new procedural

rule will apply retroactively on federal collateral review 

only if it constitutes a “watershed” rule of criminal procedure. Teague, 489 U. S., at 311 (plurality opinion). But the 

Teague Court stated that it was “unlikely” that such watershed “components of basic due process have yet to emerge.” 

Id., at 313; see also Whorton v. Bockting, 549 U. S. 406, 417 

(2007); Schriro v. Summerlin, 542 U. S. 348, 352 (2004); Tyler v. Cain, 533 U. S. 656, 667, n. 7 (2001). And in the 32 

years since Teague, as we will explain, the Court has never 

found that any new procedural rule actually satisfies that 

purported exception.3 

—————— 3By contrast, a new substantive rule—for example, a rule that particular conduct cannot constitutionally be criminalized—usually applies 

retroactively on federal collateral review. See Welch v. United States, 

578 U. S. 120, 128–129 (2016). The parties here agree, as do we, that the 

rule announced in Ramos is procedural. The Ramos rule affects “only 

the manner of determining the defendant’s culpability,” not the “range 

of conduct or the class of persons that the law punishes.” Schriro v. Summerlin, 542 U. S. 348, 353 (2004) (emphasis deleted). 
 

 

 

8 EDWARDS v. VANNOY 

Opinion of the Court 

B 

To determine whether Ramos applies retroactively on

federal collateral review, we must answer two questions.

 First, did Ramos announce a new rule of criminal procedure, as opposed to applying a settled rule? A new rule ordinarily does not apply retroactively on federal collateral 

review. 

Second, if Ramos announced a new rule, does it fall 

within an exception for watershed rules of criminal procedure that apply retroactively on federal collateral review? 

1 

Ramos held that a state jury must be unanimous to convict a defendant of a serious offense. In so holding, Ramos 

announced a new rule. 

A rule is new unless it was “dictated by precedent existing at the time the defendant’s conviction became final.” 

Teague, 489 U. S., at 301 (plurality opinion). In other 

words, a rule is new unless, at the time the conviction became final, the rule was already “apparent to all reasonable 

jurists.” Lambrix v. Singletary, 520 U. S. 518, 528 (1997). 

The starkest example of a decision announcing a new rule

is a decision that overrules an earlier case. See Whorton, 

549 U. S., at 416. 

The jury-unanimity requirement announced in Ramos 

was not dictated by precedent or apparent to all reasonable

jurists when Edwards’s conviction became final in 2011. On 

the contrary, before Ramos, many courts interpreted Apodaca to allow for non-unanimous jury verdicts in state criminal trials.4 In addition, in Ramos itself, six Members of the 

—————— 4See, e.g., Timbs v. Indiana, 586 U. S. ___, ___, n. 1 (2019) (slip op., at

3, n. 1) (the “Sixth Amendment requires jury unanimity in federal, but 

not state, criminal proceedings”); McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U. S. 742, 

766, n. 14 (2010) (“The Court has held that although the Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury requires a unanimous jury verdict in federal 
Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021) 9 

Opinion of the Court 

Court acknowledged that Apodaca allowed non-unanimous 

jury verdicts in state criminal trials. See 590 U. S., at ___ 

(SOTOMAYOR, J., concurring in part) (slip op., at 2); id., at 

___ (KAVANAUGH, J., concurring in part) (slip op., at 1); id., 

at ___–___ (THOMAS, J., concurring in judgment) (slip op., 

at 7–8); id., at ___ (ALITO, J., joined by ROBERTS, C. J., and 

KAGAN, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 1). And other Members 

of the Court recognized that Apodaca at least muddied the 

waters of the Court’s Sixth Amendment jurisprudence. Id., 

at ___, and n. 36 (plurality opinion) (slip op., at 10, and 

n. 36). In short, even in Ramos itself, the Court indicated 

that the decision was not dictated by precedent or apparent

to all reasonable jurists.

Edwards responds that the Court’s decision in Ramos 

must have applied a settled rule, not a new rule, because 

the decision adhered to the original meaning of the Sixth

Amendment’s right to a jury trial and the Fourteenth 

Amendment’s incorporation of that right (and others)

against the States. That argument conflates the merits

question presented in Ramos with the retroactivity question presented here. On the merits question, the critical

point, as the Court thoroughly explained in Ramos, is that 

the Constitution’s text and history require a unanimous 

jury in state criminal trials. On the retroactivity question, 

—————— 

criminal trials, it does not require a unanimous jury verdict in state criminal trials”); Schad v. Arizona, 501 U. S. 624, 634, n. 5 (1991) (plurality

opinion) (a “state criminal defendant, at least in noncapital cases, has no

federal right to a unanimous jury verdict”); Burch v. Louisiana, 441 U. S. 

130, 137 (1979) (the Court has “approved the use of certain nonunanimous verdicts in cases involving 12-person juries”); Ludwig v. Massachusetts, 427 U. S. 618, 625 (1976) (the “holding in Apodaca” was that “the 

jury’s verdict need not be unanimous”); Smith v. Swarthout, 742 F. 3d 

885, 895, n. 4 (CA9 2014) (“The Supreme Court has instructed that the 

Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments do not require a unanimous verdict 

in state criminal prosecutions”); see also 6 W. LaFave, J. Israel, N. King, 

& O. Kerr, Criminal Procedure §22.1(e), p. 23 (4th ed. 2015) (the “Sixth 

Amendment does not require jury unanimity in state criminal trials”). 
 

10 EDWARDS v. VANNOY 

Opinion of the Court 

the critical point is that reasonable jurists who considered 

the question before Ramos interpreted Apodaca to allow 

non-unanimous jury verdicts in state criminal trials.

 By renouncing Apodaca and expressly requiring unanimous jury verdicts in state criminal trials, Ramos plainly

announced a new rule for purposes of this Court’s retroactivity doctrine. And new rules of criminal procedure ordinarily do not apply retroactively on federal collateral 

review. 

2 

 Having determined that Ramos announced a new rule requiring jury unanimity, we must consider whether that new

rule falls within an exception for watershed rules of criminal procedure that apply retroactively on federal collateral 

review. 

This Court has stated that the watershed exception is

“extremely narrow” and applies only when, among other 

things, the new rule alters “our understanding of the bedrock procedural elements essential to the fairness of a 

proceeding.” Whorton, 549 U. S., at 417–418 (internal

quotation marks omitted). 

In the abstract, those various adjectives—watershed,

narrow, bedrock, essential—do not tell us much about 

whether a particular decision of this Court qualifies for the 

watershed exception. In practice, the exception has been 

theoretical, not real. The Court has identified only one preTeague procedural rule as watershed: the right to counsel 

recognized in the Court’s landmark decision in Gideon v. 

Wainwright, 372 U. S. 335, 344–345 (1963). See Whorton, 

549 U. S., at 419, 421. The Court has never identified any 

other pre-Teague or post-Teague rule as watershed. None. 

Moreover, the Court has flatly proclaimed on multiple occasions that the watershed exception is unlikely to cover

any more new rules. Even 32 years ago in Teague itself, the 
 

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Opinion of the Court 

Court stated that it was “unlikely” that additional watershed rules would “emerge.” 489 U. S., at 313 (plurality 

opinion). And since Teague, the Court has often reiterated 

that “it is unlikely that any such rules have yet to emerge.” 

Whorton, 549 U. S., at 417 (internal quotation marks and 

alteration omitted); see also Beard v. Banks, 542 U. S. 406, 

417 (2004); Summerlin, 542 U. S., at 352; Tyler, 533 U. S., 

at 667, n. 7; Graham v. Collins, 506 U. S. 461, 478 (1993); 

Sawyer, 497 U. S., at 243; Butler v. McKellar, 494 U. S. 407, 

416 (1990).

Consistent with those many emphatic pronouncements,

the Court since Teague has rejected every claim that a new 

procedural rule qualifies as a watershed rule. For example,

in Beard v. Banks, 542 U. S., at 408, the Court declined to 

retroactively apply the rule announced in Mills v. Maryland, 486 U. S. 367, 384 (1988), that capital juries may not 

be required to disregard certain mitigating factors. In 

O’Dell v. Netherland, 521 U. S. 151, 153 (1997), the Court 

refused to retroactively apply the rule announced in Simmons v. South Carolina, 512 U. S. 154, 156 (1994), that a 

capital defendant must be able, in certain circumstances, to

inform the sentencing jury that he is parole ineligible. In 

Lambrix v. Singletary, 520 U. S., at 539–540, the Court declined to retroactively apply the rule announced in Espinosa v. Florida, 505 U. S. 1079, 1082 (1992) (per curiam),

that sentencers may not weigh invalid aggravating circumstances before recommending or imposing the death penalty. In Sawyer v. Smith, 497 U. S., at 229, the Court refused to retroactively apply the rule announced in Caldwell 

v. Mississippi, 472 U. S. 320, 323 (1985), which prohibited 

a death sentence by a jury led to the false belief that responsibility for the sentence rested elsewhere.

The list of cases declining to retroactively apply a new 

rule of criminal procedure extends back long before Teague

to some of this Court’s most historic criminal procedure decisions. For example, in Johnson v. New Jersey, 384 U. S. 
 

12 EDWARDS v. VANNOY 

Opinion of the Court 

719, 721 (1966), the Court declined to retroactively apply 

Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436, 444–445 (1966), which

required that police inform individuals in custody of certain

constitutional rights before questioning them. And in Linkletter v. Walker, 381 U. S., at 639–640, the Court refused 

to retroactively apply Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U. S. 643, 655 

(1961), which incorporated the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule against the States.

Edwards seeks to distinguish Ramos from the long line of

cases where the Court has declined to retroactively apply

new procedural rules. Edwards emphasizes three aspects 

of Ramos: (i) the significance of the jury-unanimity right; 

(ii) Ramos’s reliance on the original meaning of the Constitution; and (iii) the effect of Ramos in preventing racial discrimination in the jury process. 

But Edwards’s attempts to distinguish Ramos are unavailing because the Court has already considered and rejected those kinds of arguments in prior retroactivity cases. 

First, Edwards emphasizes the significance of the juryunanimity right for criminal defendants. But that argument for retroactivity cannot be squared with the Court’s 

decisions in Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U. S. 145 (1968), and 

DeStefano v. Woods, 392 U. S. 631 (1968) (per curiam). In 

Duncan, the Court repudiated several precedents and ruled

that a defendant has a constitutional right to a jury trial in

a state criminal case. 391 U. S., at 149–150, 154–155. Notwithstanding the extraordinary significance of Duncan in 

guaranteeing a jury trial and expanding the rights of criminal defendants, the Court in DeStefano declined to retroactively apply the jury right. 392 U. S., at 633; see also Summerlin, 542 U. S., at 356–358 (relying on DeStefano and 

rejecting retroactivity of jury right recognized in Ring v. 

Arizona, 536 U. S. 584, 589 (2002)). We cannot discern a 

principled basis for retroactively applying the subsidiary 

Ramos jury-unanimity right when the Court in DeStefano 
 

 

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Opinion of the Court 

declined to retroactively apply the broader jury right itself.5 

Second, Edwards stresses that Ramos relied on the original meaning of the Sixth Amendment. But that argument

for retroactivity is inconsistent with Crawford v. Washington, 541 U. S. 36 (2004), and Whorton v. Bockting, 549 U. S. 

406 (2007). In Crawford, the Court relied on the original

meaning of the Sixth Amendment’s Confrontation Clause 

to overrule precedent and restrict the use of hearsay evidence against criminal defendants. 541 U. S., at 60–69. 

Notwithstanding Crawford’s reliance on the original meaning of the Sixth Amendment, the Court in Whorton declined 

to retroactively apply Crawford. 549 U. S., at 421. 

Third, Edwards says that Ramos prevents racial discrimination by ensuring that the votes of all jurors, regardless 

—————— 5Edwards argues that the Ramos rule mirrors the rule announced in 

Burch v. Louisiana, 441 U. S. 130, 134 (1979). In Burch, the Court held 

that six-person jury verdicts must be unanimous. According to Edwards, 

the Court retroactively applied Burch in Brown v. Louisiana, 447 U. S. 

323 (1980). But the Justices who concurred in the judgment and supplied

the decisive opinion in Brown said only that the Burch rule should apply

to all cases on direct review. 447 U. S., at 337 (opinion of Powell, J., 

joined by Stevens, J.). They did not say that the rule should apply retroactively on federal collateral review. So Brown does not help Edwards 

here. 

The Court’s decision in Ivan V. v. City of New York, 407 U. S. 203 

(1972) (per curiam), is no more helpful to Edwards. In In re Winship, the 

Court held that a jury must find guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt.” 397 

U. S. 358, 364 (1970). And in Ivan V., the Court held that the rule announced in Winship applied in a case on direct review. 407 U. S., at 205. 

But in its numerous retroactivity cases, this Court has never identified 

the Winship rule as a watershed rule of criminal procedure that applies 

retroactively on federal collateral review. That no doubt explains why, 

in his submissions to this Court, Edwards himself did not cite Ivan V. in 

support of his retroactivity argument.

In any event, Brown and Ivan V. were pre-Teague decisions. See 

Teague v. Lane, 489 U. S. 288 (1989). Because Teague tightened the previous standard set forth in Linkletter v. Walker, 381 U. S. 618 (1965), for

applying a decision retroactively on federal collateral review, pre-Teague 

decisions holding that a rule is retroactive are not as relevant as preTeague decisions holding that a rule is not retroactive, such as DeStefano. 
 

14 EDWARDS v. VANNOY 

Opinion of the Court 

of race, matter in the jury room. But that argument for retroactivity cannot prevail in light of Batson v. Kentucky, 476 

U. S. 79 (1986), and Allen v. Hardy, 478 U. S. 255 (1986) 

(per curiam). In Batson, the Court overruled precedent and 

revolutionized day-to-day jury selection by holding that

state prosecutors may not discriminate on the basis of race

when exercising individual peremptory challenges. 476 

U. S., at 92–93, 96–98. Nonetheless, the Court in Allen declined to retroactively apply Batson. 478 U. S., at 261; see 

also Teague, 489 U. S., at 295–296 (reaffirming 

Allen).

The Court’s decisions in Duncan, Crawford, and Batson 

were momentous and consequential. All three decisions 

fundamentally reshaped criminal procedure throughout

the United States and significantly expanded the constitutional rights of criminal defendants. One involved the jurytrial right, one involved the original meaning of the Sixth 

Amendment’s Confrontation Clause, and one involved racial discrimination in jury selection. Yet the Court did not 

apply any of those decisions retroactively on federal collateral review. Ramos is likewise momentous and consequential. But we see no good rationale for treating Ramos differently from Duncan, Crawford, and Batson. Consistent 

with the Court’s long line of retroactivity precedents, we 

hold that the Ramos jury-unanimity rule does not apply retroactively on federal collateral review.6 

In so concluding, we recognize that the Court’s many retroactivity precedents taken together raise a legitimate

question: If landmark and historic criminal procedure decisions—including Mapp, Miranda, Duncan, Crawford, Batson, and now Ramos—do not apply retroactively on federal 

—————— 6The Ramos rule does not apply retroactively on federal collateral review. States remain free, if they choose, to retroactively apply the juryunanimity rule as a matter of state law in state post-conviction proceedings. See Danforth v. Minnesota, 552 U. S. 264, 282 (2008). 
 

Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021) 15 

Opinion of the Court 

collateral review, how can any additional new rules of criminal procedure apply retroactively on federal collateral review? At this point, some 32 years after Teague, we think 

the only candid answer is that none can—that is, no new 

rules of criminal procedure can satisfy the watershed exception. We cannot responsibly continue to suggest otherwise to litigants and courts. In Teague itself, the Court recognized that the purported exception was unlikely to apply 

in practice, because it was “unlikely” that such watershed 

“components of basic due process have yet to emerge.” 489 

U. S., at 313 (plurality opinion). The Court has often repeated that “it is unlikely that any of these watershed rules

has yet to emerge.” Tyler, 533 U. S., at 667, n. 7 (alteration

and internal quotation marks omitted); see also, e.g., Whorton, 549 U. S., at 417; Summerlin, 542 U. S., at 352. And 

for decades, the Court has rejected watershed status for

new procedural rule after new procedural rule, amply 

demonstrating that the purported exception has become an

empty promise.

Continuing to articulate a theoretical exception that

never actually applies in practice offers false hope to defendants, distorts the law, misleads judges, and wastes the

resources of defense counsel, prosecutors, and courts.

Moreover, no one can reasonably rely on an exception that 

is non-existent in practice, so no reliance interests can be 

affected by forthrightly acknowledging reality. It is time— 

probably long past time—to make explicit what has become

increasingly apparent to bench and bar over the last 32 

years: New procedural rules do not apply retroactively on

federal collateral review. The watershed exception is moribund. It must “be regarded as retaining no vitality.” Herrera v. Wyoming, 587 U. S. ___, ___ (2019) (slip op., at 11) 

(internal quotation marks omitted). 
 

16 EDWARDS v. VANNOY 

Opinion of the Court 

3 

We respectfully offer four responses to the dissent. 

First, in the dissent’s view, if a right is important enough

to justify overruling or repudiating precedent (as in Ramos), then it often is important enough to apply retroactively as a watershed rule of criminal procedure. But the 

Court’s precedents say the opposite and demonstrate that

the dissent’s position erroneously inverts stare decisis and 

Teague. Teague recognized that the Court would occasionally announce new rules of criminal procedure by overruling or repudiating existing precedents. Teague further explained, however, that it was “unlikely” that such new 

procedural rules would apply retroactively on federal collateral review. 489 U. S., at 313 (plurality opinion). In other 

words, under this Court’s longstanding case law, it is easier 

to overrule or repudiate a precedent—as the Court did in 

Mapp, Miranda, Duncan, Batson, and Crawford, for example—than it is to apply the new procedural rule retroactively on federal collateral review—as demonstrated by the 

Court’s corresponding non-retroactivity decisions in Linkletter, Johnson, DeStefano, Allen, and Whorton. 

The Ramos Court fully understood all of this. Although 

Ramos stopped short of expressly deciding this retroactivity

question (because it was not squarely presented), Ramos 

discussed retroactivity and plainly foreshadowed today’s

decision. The lead opinion in Ramos—which was joined in

relevant part by two of today’s dissenters, JUSTICE BREYER 

and JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR—explained that overruling or repudiating Apodaca was not likely to significantly affect

Louisiana’s and Oregon’s reliance interests in preserving final convictions because Ramos was not likely to apply retroactively on federal collateral review. In particular, the

lead opinion said that the States’ “worries” about Ramos 

applying retroactively and overturning hundreds of final 

convictions outstripped “the facts” because “Teague’s test is 
 

Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021) 17 

Opinion of the Court 

a demanding one, so much so that this Court has yet to announce a new rule of criminal procedure capable of meeting 

it.” Ramos, 590 U. S., at ___ (opinion of GORSUCH, J.) (slip 

op., at 24); see also id., at ___–___ (KAVANAUGH, J., concurring in part) (slip op., at 16–17). The lead opinion added

that Teague is “demanding by design, expressly calibrated

to address the reliance interests States have in the finality 

of their criminal judgments.” Id., at ___ (opinion of

GORSUCH, J.) (slip op., at 24). In light of that explicit language in Ramos, the Court’s decision today can hardly come

as a surprise.

In short, the Court’s holding today—namely, that Ramos 

does not apply retroactively on federal collateral review—

carefully adheres to Ramos and tracks the Court’s many

longstanding precedents on retroactivity. 

Second, the dissent suggests that the Court knows that 

Ramos should apply retroactively under the watershed exception, but wants to avoid applying Ramos retroactively, 

and for that reason has decided to just eliminate the watershed exception altogether. That suggestion is unfounded. 

Ramos was a momentous decision, and those of us who 

joined it continue to agree with it. But as we have explained, Ramos itself analyzed the Court’s retroactivity 

precedents and foretold today’s decision on retroactivity.

We are simply following through on what Ramos (as well as

the Court’s many other precedents) already said about retroactivity to now squarely hold that Ramos does not apply

retroactively on federal collateral review. If we thought

otherwise and believed that Ramos qualified under the

Court’s precedents as a rule that applies retroactively, we 

would certainly say so. But applying our retroactivity precedents, we have concluded that Ramos does not apply retroactively—just as the Court has previously held that other 

historic cases like Mapp, Miranda, Duncan, Batson, and 

Crawford did not apply retroactively. After reaching that 
 

18 EDWARDS v. VANNOY 

Opinion of the Court 

conclusion, we then took account of the overall jurisprudential landscape of the last several decades in Teague cases 

and acknowledged what has become unmistakably clear:

The purported watershed exception is moribund. 

Third, on that last point, the dissent responds that 

Teague nominally identified a retroactivity exception for

watershed procedural rules and that we should do so as

well. But the problem, as we see it, is that Teague simultaneously said that it was “unlikely” that new procedural 

rules would qualify as watershed. 489 U. S., at 313 (plurality opinion). So Teague took with one hand what it seemingly gave with the other. And in the 32 years since Teague, 

this Court has never once held that a new procedural rule 

qualifies for the purported watershed exception. What is 

more, the Court has regularly repeated that Teague’s watershed exception would likely never be satisfied. The 

Court today need not and does not overrule any post-Teague

cases that held the watershed exception satisfied because

there are no post-Teague cases that held the watershed exception satisfied.

As noted above, no stare decisis values would be served 

by continuing to indulge the fiction that Teague’s purported 

watershed exception endures. No one can reasonably rely

on a supposed exception that has never operated in practice. And perpetuating what has become an illusory exception misleads litigants and judges, and needlessly expends

the scarce resources of defense counsel, prosecutors, and 

courts. At this point, given that landmark cases like Mapp, 

Miranda, Duncan, Batson, Crawford, and now Ramos have 

not applied retroactively, we are simply acknowledging reality and stating the obvious: The purported watershed exception retains no vitality. 

Fourth, the dissent asserts that the Court is not living up

to the promise of Ramos for criminal defendants. To begin

with, the dissent cannot reasonably charge the Court with 

failing to live up to Ramos given that Ramos itself explicitly 
 

Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021) 19 

Opinion of the Court 

forecast today’s decision on retroactivity. Moreover, with 

respect, JUSTICE KAGAN dissented in Ramos. To be sure, 

the dissent’s position on the jury-unanimity rule in Ramos 

was perfectly legitimate, as is the dissent’s position on retroactivity in today’s case. And it is of course fair for a dissent to vigorously critique the Court’s analysis. But it is 

another thing altogether to dissent in Ramos and then to 

turn around and impugn today’s majority for supposedly 

shortchanging criminal defendants. To properly assess the

implications for criminal defendants, one should assess the 

implications of Ramos and today’s ruling together. And 

criminal defendants as a group are better off under Ramos 

and today’s decision, taken together, than they would have 

been if JUSTICE KAGAN’s dissenting view had prevailed in 

Ramos. If the dissent’s view had prevailed in Ramos, no 

defendant would ever be entitled to the jury-unanimity 

right—not on collateral review, not on direct review, and

not in the future. By contrast, under the Court’s holdings 

in Ramos and this case, criminal defendants whose cases 

are still on direct review or whose cases arise in the future 

will have the benefit of the jury-unanimity right announced 

in Ramos. The rhetoric in today’s dissent is misdirected. 

Different Members of the Court have reached different conclusions in Ramos and in this case, but each Member of the 

Court has acted in good faith in deciding the difficult questions before us. 

* * * 

To summarize the Court’s retroactivity principles: New 

substantive rules alter “the range of conduct or the class of

persons that the law punishes.” Summerlin, 542 U. S., at 

353. Those new substantive rules apply to cases pending in

trial courts and on direct review, and they also apply retroactively on federal collateral review. New procedural rules

alter “only the manner of determining the defendant’s culpability.” Ibid. (emphasis deleted). Those new procedural 
 

 

20 EDWARDS v. VANNOY 

Opinion of the Court 

rules apply to cases pending in trial courts and on direct

review. But new procedural rules do not apply retroactively

on federal collateral review. 

Ramos announced a new rule of criminal procedure. It 

does not apply retroactively on federal collateral review. 

We affirm the judgment of the U. S. Court of Appeals for

the Fifth Circuit. 

It is so ordered. 
 

_________________ 

_________________ 

Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021) 1 

THOMAS, J., concurring 

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES 

No. 19–5807 

THEDRICK EDWARDS, PETITIONER v. 

DARREL VANNOY, WARDEN 

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF 

APPEALS FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT 

[May 17, 2021] 

JUSTICE THOMAS, with whom JUSTICE GORSUCH joins,

concurring. 

I join the majority in full because it correctly charts its

way through precedent to hold expressly what we have long 

implied: “New procedural rules do not apply retroactively

on federal collateral review.” Ante, at 15. I write separately

to highlight that we could also have resolved this case by

applying the statutory text of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA). AEDPA directs 

federal courts to deny “any claim that was adjudicated on

the merits in State court” unless the state court’s decision 

“was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application

of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the

Supreme Court.” 28 U. S. C. §2254(d)(1). In 2011, petitioner urged a Louisiana court to hold that the Federal Constitution requires jury unanimity, and the court rejected 

that claim on the merits. That conclusion was consistent 

with Apodaca v. Oregon, 406 U. S. 404 (1972), in which this

Court determined that the Constitution does not require

unanimous jury verdicts for state criminal convictions. 

AEDPA thus leaves no room for this Court—or any federal 

court—to grant relief. 
 

 

 

2 EDWARDS v. VANNOY 

THOMAS, J., concurring 

I 

A 

Congress first prescribed federal habeas jurisdiction in

the Judiciary Act of 1789. That statute did not clearly define the scope of relief, but “the black-letter principle of the 

common law [was] that the writ was simply not available at 

all to one convicted of crime by a court of competent jurisdiction.”1 Bator, Finality in Criminal Law and Federal Habeas Corpus for State Prisoners, 76 Harv. L. Rev. 441, 465–

466 (1963) (Bator); see Felker v. Turpin, 518 U. S. 651, 663 

(1996) (citing Ex parte Watkins, 3 Pet. 193 (1830)). And the 

writ did not extend at all to prisoners confined under state

authority. Bator 465. 

Congress expanded the writ in the Habeas Corpus Act of

1867. Ch. 28, 14 Stat. 385. This Act extended the writ to 

prisoners in state custody but again provided only “bare

guidelines” about the scope of the writ.2 Wright v. West, 505 

U. S. 277, 285 (1992) (plurality opinion). At first, this Court 

continued to apply the common-law rule that allowed a 

state petitioner to challenge only “the jurisdiction of the

court that had rendered the judgment under which he was

in custody.” Ibid. But the Court later “expand[ed] the cat-

—————— 1Section 14 of the Judiciary Act provided that “courts of the United 

States . . . shall have power to issue writs of . . . habeas corpus” and that 

“justices of the supreme court, as well as judges of the district courts, 

shall have power to grant writs of habeas corpus for the purpose of an 

inquiry into the cause of commitment.—Provided, That writs of habeas 

corpus shall in no cases extend to prisoners in gaol, unless where they

are in custody, under or by colour of the authority of the United States,

or are committed for trial before some court of the same, or are necessary

to be brought into court to testify.” 1 Stat. 81–82. 2The relevant language of the Act stated that courts, “in addition to 

the authority already conferred by [the Judiciary Act of 1789], shall have

power to grant writs of habeas corpus in all cases where any person may 

be restrained of his or her liberty in violation of the constitution, or of 

any treaty or law of the United States.” 14 Stat. 385. 
 

 

 

Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021) 3 

THOMAS, J., concurring 

egory of claims deemed to be jurisdictional for habeas purposes.” Ibid. In 1874, for example, this Court found jurisdictional defects whenever state courts imposed sentences 

under unconstitutional statutes or imposed sentences not 

authorized by a statute. Ibid. (collecting cases). And a few 

decades later, the Court expanded relief to situations 

where, in the eyes of the federal court, “no state court had

provided a full and fair opportunity to litigate” a prisoner’s 

federal claims. Ibid. But absent a “jurisdictional” defect, a 

state court judgment was entitled to “‘absolute respect’” as

long as the prisoner “‘had been given an adequate opportunity to obtain full and fair consideration of his federal 

claim in the state courts.’” Ibid. That rule left no room to 

grant relief simply because a state court made an error of 

law. 

In 1953, this Court abruptly changed course and decided

that federal courts could grant a writ of habeas corpus

simply because they disagreed with a state court’s judgment. See Brown v. Allen, 344 U. S. 443, 463. Around the 

same time, this Court declared that many constitutional 

rights of criminal procedure—some old, and some new—applied against the States. See, e.g., Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U. S. 

643 (1961) (exclusionary rule); Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 

U. S. 335 (1963) (right to a court-appointed attorney); Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436 (1966) (right to be informed 

of right against self-incrimination). That combination predictably raised tough questions: Should new rules apply retroactively to final state-court judgments, allowing federal 

courts to grant habeas relief even if state courts did not err

when issuing their decisions? And if so, by what authority 

could federal courts grant that relief? 

Admitting that “the Constitution neither prohibits nor requires retrospective effect,” Linkletter v. Walker, 381 U. S. 

618, 629 (1965), the Court took an atextual and ad hoc approach, presumably based on its interpretation of the 1867 

Act. The Court declared that some federal decisions apply 
 

 

 

4 EDWARDS v. VANNOY 

THOMAS, J., concurring 

retroactively to final state convictions, thus allowing federal courts to grant habeas relief depending on the “merits 

and demerits in each case.” Ibid. To guide the analysis, 

Linkletter announced several factors for federal courts to 

consider: “the prior history of the rule in question, its purpose and effect, and whether retrospective operation will 

further or retard its operation.” Ibid. 

This rule did “not le[ad] to consistent results,” so two decades later the Court tried a new interpretation of the 1867 

Act. See Teague v. Lane, 489 U. S. 288, 302 (1989) (plurality opinion); Danforth v. Minnesota, 552 U. S. 264, 278 

(2008) (“Teague’s general rule of nonretroactivity was an exercise of this Court’s power to interpret the federal habeas

statute”). Relevant here, Teague allowed federal courts to 

give new constitutional rules of criminal procedure retroactive effect on habeas review only if the new rule was “watershed,” “‘bedrock,’” or “‘essential.’” 489 U. S., at 311 (emphasis deleted).3 

B 

Teague, however, was not the final word on how federal 

courts should review the decisions of state courts. In 1996, 

Congress enacted AEDPA, the most significant change to

the habeas corpus statute since 1867. AEDPA filled in the 

“bare guidelines” of the 1867 Act by creating a comprehensive system for addressing federal habeas claims brought 

by state prisoners. See Wright, 505 U. S., at 285. 

Directly relevant here are two provisions that ensure that 

—————— 3Two years before Teague, this Court overruled cases that had allowed 

courts to apply the balancing test in Linkletter v. Walker, 381 U. S. 618 

(1965), to cases on direct review, holding instead that the Constitution 

required courts to apply new procedural rules retroactively to cases on 

direct appellate review. Griffith v. Kentucky, 479 U. S. 314, 328 (1987). 

Teague also explained that new rules that “accord constitutional protection to . . . primary activity” retroactively apply to cases on federal collateral review. 489 U. S., at 307, 310–311. These are considered substantive rules. See Welch v. United States, 578 U. S. 120, 128 (2016). 
Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021) 5 

THOMAS, J., concurring 

state courts have the primary role in adjudicating these 

claims. First, a prisoner must exhaust his claims in state

court before he can seek relief in federal court. If “any available [state-law] procedure” remains open, a federal “writ of 

habeas corpus . . . shall not be granted.” §§2254(b)–(c). Second, once a state court has had the opportunity to decide

that claim, AEDPA demands that federal courts respect 

that judgment. The law precludes relief “with respect to 

any claim that was adjudicated on the merits in State court

proceedings unless the adjudication of the claim” either (1) 

“resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an 

unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal 

law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United

States,” or (2) “resulted in a decision that was based on an

unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding.” §2254(d).

It is not enough for a federal court to disagree with the state

court—much less disagree on a point of law that this Court

had not yet settled when the state court issued its judgment. Rather, the state court’s decision must conflict with 

clearly established law and be obviously wrong “beyond any 

possibility for fairminded disagreement.” Harrington v. 

Richter, 562 U. S. 86, 103 (2011); Greene v. Fisher, 565 U. S. 

34, 38–40 (2011). 

II 

A 

Here, the system worked as designed. Edwards presented his unanimous jury claim to a Louisiana court. And 

the state court reasonably relied on Apodaca in rejecting

that claim. AEDPA is clear about what happens next—relief “shall not be granted.” §2254(d).

Our analysis could have begun and ended there—with

§2254(d)(1)’s plain text. Congress, through AEDPA, has

made clear that federal courts cannot provide relief in this 

case. See Montgomery v. Louisiana, 577 U. S. 190, 221 
 

 

6 EDWARDS v. VANNOY 

THOMAS, J., concurring 

(2016) (Scalia, J., dissenting); see also Ex parte Bollman, 4 

Cranch 75, 94 (1807) (Marshall, C. J.) (“[T]he power to 

award the writ by any of the courts of the United States,

must be given by written law”). 

B 

The Court, instead, relies on Teague. I join the Court’s

opinion because it correctly applies precedent and leads to 

the same judgment, but I would be remiss if I did not point 

out two other problems with Teague. 

First, it has never been clear what gave this Court authority to grant habeas relief to state prisoners based on 

“new” constitutional rules of criminal procedure. Teague

did not explain why the 1867 Act gave federal courts this 

power. Moreover, Teague primarily focused on moving the

law in the opposite direction of Linkletter’s permissive approach to collaterally reviewing final state convictions. See 

Danforth, 552 U. S., at 278 (“Teague . . . situated the rule it 

announced in th[e] line of cases adjusting the scope of federal habeas relief in accordance with equitable and prudential considerations”). Even if federal courts had this power,

we never decided whether Congress’ most recent version of 

the habeas statute—AEDPA—continued to allow such relief. Given all that, the majority wisely closes a door to retroactive relief that likely never existed in the first place. 

Second, the Court’s reliance on Teague today and in the

past should not be construed to signal that AEDPA is an

afterthought in analyzing a claim like petitioner’s or that 

Teague could justify relief where AEDPA forecloses it. 

AEDPA does contemplate that some new constitutional 

rules might be retroactive in narrow circumstances. See 

§§2254(e)(2)(A)(i) (evidentiary hearings), 2244(b)(2)(A) (second-or-successive bar), 2244(d)(1)(C) (statute of limitations). But it does not contemplate retroactive rules upsetting a state court’s adjudication of an issue that reasonably 

applied the law at the time. Section 2254(d)—the absolute 
 

 

 

 

Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021) 7 

THOMAS, J., concurring 

bar on claims that state courts reasonably denied—has no

exception for retroactive rights. Congress’ decision to create retroactivity exceptions to the statute of limitations and 

to the bar on second-or-successive petitions but not for 

§2254(d) is strong evidence that Teague could never have 

led to relief here. Russello v. United States, 464 U. S. 16, 

23 (1983).4 The plain text applies regardless of what a previous interpretation of a previous statute says.5 

* * * 

A state court rejected petitioner’s claim that he was entitled to a unanimous jury verdict. That adjudication was not 

unreasonable or contrary to clearly established federal law.

AEDPA’s explicit directive thus independently resolves this 

case: “a writ of habeas corpus . . . shall not be granted.” 

§2254(d). 

—————— 4As JUSTICE GORSUCH correctly points out, federal courts have “equitable discretion to decide whether to issue the writ or to provide a remedy,” which includes the powers to create doctrines such as harmless error. Post, at 8 (concurring opinion). And federal courts can rely on those 

doctrines as well as statutory bars to deny relief. That is why, as JUSTICE 

GORSUCH explains, an equitable retroactivity bar with no watershed exception can independently justify denying relief. Post, at 9, n. 5. 5The Constitution does not require that habeas relief be available for

new “watershed” rules of criminal procedure. See, e.g., Brown v. Allen, 

344 U. S. 443, 532–533 (1953) (Jackson, J., concurring in result); Linkletter, 381 U. S., at 629. Teague also acknowledged that a later change in 

law does not require invalidating a final judgment. See 489 U. S., at 

308–309 (plurality opinion). And again, habeas corpus traditionally did

not apply at all to prisoners sentenced by a court with valid jurisdiction.

See Bator 465–466. 
 

_________________ 

_________________ 

Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021) 1 

GORSUCH, J., concurring 

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES 

No. 19–5807 

THEDRICK EDWARDS, PETITIONER v. 

DARREL VANNOY, WARDEN 

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF 

APPEALS FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT 

[May 17, 2021] 

JUSTICE GORSUCH, with whom JUSTICE THOMAS joins,

concurring. 

Sometimes this Court leaves a door ajar and holds out the 

possibility that someone, someday might walk through it—

though no one ever has or, in truth, ever will. In Teague v. 

Lane, 489 U. S. 288 (1989), the Court suggested that one

day it might apply a new “watershed” rule of criminal procedure retroactively to undo a final state court conviction. 

But that day never came to pass. Instead, over the following three decades this Court denied “watershed” status to

one rule after another. Rules guaranteeing individuals the

right to confront their accusers. Rules ensuring that only a

jury may decide a defendant’s fate in a death penalty case.

Rules preventing racially motivated jury selection. All 

failed to win retroactive application. Today, the Court candidly admits what has been long apparent: Teague held out 

a “false hope” and the time has come to close its door. Ante, 

at 15. We take this step not because this Court’s criminal

procedure rulings are somehow unimportant. Any decision

seeking to enforce liberties enshrined in the Constitution

has a claim to “watershed” importance. Instead, we abandon Teague’s test because it poses a question this Court has

no business asking. 
 

 

 

2 EDWARDS v. VANNOY 

GORSUCH, J., concurring 

I 

Though we often refer to the writ of habeas corpus, the 

common law knew several. See Ex parte Bollman, 8 U. S. 

(4 Cranch) 75, 97–98 (1807). All had one thing in common: 

Each required a custodian to produce (habeas) a prisoner’s 

person (corpus). But they served different ends. Some 

writs were tools for moving a prisoner from one court to another—whether for a new prosecution (ad respondendum)

or to execute a prior judgment (ad satisfaciendum). Others 

functioned more like a subpoena to procure a prisoner’s 

presence to testify in court (ad testificandum). Others still 

served to remove a case from an inferior court to a superior

one (cum causa). 3 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the 

Laws of England 129–131 (1768). 

Among them all, however, only one came to be known as 

“The Great Writ.” The writ of habeas corpus ad subjiciendum was a mechanism for asking “why the liberty of [a] 

subject[] is restrained.” Id., at 131 (emphasis added).

Leading up to the English Civil War, monarchs sometimes

jailed their subjects summarily and indefinitely, with little 

explanation and even less process. E.g., Darnel’s Case, 3 

How. St. Tr. 1–59 (K. B. 1627). In response, common law 

courts developed the ad subjiciendum writ to force the 

Crown to provide reasons for its actions and, if necessary,

to ensure adequate process—like a criminal trial—to justify 

any further detention. See Petition of Right, 3 Car. 1, ch. 1, 

¶¶ 5, 8 (1628). In other words, “habeas corpus [w]as the

instrument by which due process could be insisted upon.” 

Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 542 U. S. 507, 555 (2004) (Scalia, J., 

dissenting).

Great though it was, the writ’s power was never limitless. 

A prisoner confined under a final judgment of conviction by 

a court of competent jurisdiction stood on different footing 

than one confined by the King without trial. A court might

issue the writ asking, “What is the reason for confinement?” 
 

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GORSUCH, J., concurring 

But if the return came back: “Because he’s serving a custodial sentence after being convicted of a crime,” the inquiry 

was usually at an end. See Opinion on the Writ of Habeas 

Corpus, Wilm. 77, 88, 97 Eng. Rep. 29, 36 (K. B. 1758); cf. 

Anonymus, Cart. 221, 124 Eng. Rep. 928 (C. P. 1671); Habeas Corpus Act of 1679, 31 Car. 2, ch. 2, ¶¶ 2, 20. Custody

pursuant to a final judgment was proof that a defendant 

had received the process due to him. See, e.g., Bushell’s 

Case, Vaugh. 135, 142–143, 124 Eng. Rep. 1006, 1009–1010

(C. P. 1670).

In 1789, Congress authorized federal courts to issue the 

habeas writ. 1 Cong. ch. 20, § 14, 1 Stat. 73, 81–82; Ex parte 

Bollman, 8 U. S. (4 Cranch), at 93–94. When called upon to

interpret that statute, this Court defined the scope of habeas review by looking “to the common law.” Id., at 93–94. 

Unsurprisingly, it proceeded to restate the longstanding

rule associated with criminal judgments: Ad subjiciendum

provided no recourse for a prisoner confined pursuant to a 

final judgment of conviction. Ex parte Watkins, 28 U. S. (3 

Pet.) 193, 209 (1830). As Chief Justice Marshall rhetorically asked, “is not that judgment in itself sufficient cause?” 

Id., at 202 (emphasis added). 

If the answer was nearly always yes, one important exception existed both here and in England. A habeas court 

could grant relief if the court of conviction lacked jurisdiction over the defendant or his offense. Id., at 202–203. Still, 

the exception was “confined” to that “limited class of cases.” 

Ex parte Parks, 93 U. S. (3 Otto) 18, 21 (1876). One judge

could not grant relief just because he might have decided 

the merits of the case differently than another had. As this 

Court put it, a perceived “error in the judgment or proceedings, under and by virtue of which the party is imprisoned,

constitute[d] no ground for” relief. Ex parte Siebold, 100 

U. S. (10 Otto) 371, 375 (1880). Any other approach, the 

Court explained, risked converting the habeas writ into “a

mere writ of error,” little more than a chance to redo a trial 
 

 

 

4 EDWARDS v. VANNOY 

GORSUCH, J., concurring 

or its appeal. Ibid. 

Originally, Congress allowed federal courts to issue habeas writs only to federal custodians. Reconstruction 

changed that. After the Civil War, Congress granted federal courts the power to issue habeas writs to state authorities as well. See Act of Feb. 5, 1867, 39 Cong. ch. 28, § 1,

14 Stat. 385, 385.1 Even then, however, this Court continued to interpret the habeas statute consistent with historical practice. If a prisoner was in custody pursuant to a final

state court judgment, a federal court was powerless to revisit those proceedings unless the state court had acted

without jurisdiction. E.g., In re Graham, 138 U. S. 461, 462 

(1891); Tinsley v. Anderson, 171 U. S. 101, 104–106 (1898); 

Markuson v. Boucher, 175 U. S. 184, 185–186 (1899); Medcraf v. Hodge, 245 U. S. 630, 630 (1917) (per curiam).

Under the view that prevailed in this country for most of

our history, and in England for even longer, Teague’s question about the “retroactive” application of “watershed” rules 

of criminal procedure to undo final criminal judgments

would have made no sense. Because a final judgment of 

conviction, pursuant to a full-fledged criminal trial, was the 

process due to a criminal serving a custodial sentence, the

habeas writ had served its purpose. A final judgment evidenced a lawful basis for confinement and was “binding on

all the world.” Ex parte Watkins, 28 U. S. (3 Pet.), at 207. 

—————— 1That Act conferred on federal courts the “power to grant writs of habeas corpus in all cases where any person may be restrained of his or her

liberty in violation of” federal law. Ibid. (emphasis added). Two earlier 

statutes extended federal habeas jurisdiction to state custodians, but 

only for a much narrower class of cases. In 1833, Congress authorized

federal courts to issue habeas process to state custodians detaining federal officers for acts taken to implement federal law. Act of Mar. 2, 1833, 

22 Cong. ch. 57, § 7, 4 Stat. 632, 634–635. This provision lives on in 28 

U. S. C. § 2241(c)(2). And in 1842, Congress permitted federal courts to

issue habeas process to state custodians detaining foreign officials whose 

acts implicated the law of nations. Act of Aug. 29, 1842, 27 Cong. ch. 

257, 5 Stat. 539, 539. It, too, lives on in 28 U. S. C. § 2241(c)(4). 
 

Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021) 5 

GORSUCH, J., concurring 

II 

Only in the middle of the twentieth century did things

really begin to change. In 1915, this Court suggested that

a state court’s extreme departure from “established modes”

of criminal trial practice, such as proceeding under the 

specter of mob violence, might be akin to the loss of “jurisdiction,” at least if no corrective mechanism like an appeal 

existed. Frank v. Mangum, 237 U. S. 309, 326, 335–336 

(1915). But if that represented an innovation, it was a modest one. 

The same cannot be said for Brown v. Allen, 344 U. S. 

443, 464, 478 (1953). There, this Court effectively recast

habeas as another way for federal courts to redress practically any error of federal law they might find in state court

proceedings. Never mind that state courts are obligated to

follow federal law under the Supremacy Clause. Never 

mind that those courts may have already passed on a defendant’s argument about his federal rights. See id., at 487; 

id., at 497–501 (Frankfurter, J.). Never mind, too, that the 

defendant may have lost on appeal within the state court

system, and even petitioned this Court for direct review. 

See id., at 456–457; id., at 489–497 (Frankfurter, J.). Everyone accepts that, in our criminal justice system today, a

judgment becomes final only after the completion of a trial

and the appellate process, including the opportunity to seek

certiorari from this Court on questions of federal law. See 

Clay v. United States, 537 U. S. 522, 527 (2003).2 Yet, even 

—————— 2When a sovereign furnishes an opportunity to appeal (as state and 

federal governments now do), it necessarily invites an appellate court to

revisit an initial merits determination. See J. Baker, An Introduction to 

English Legal History 148–153 (5th ed. 2019) (describing development of

the appeal at common law); G. Jacob, A New Law-Dictionary (1729) (defining “appeal”). Under an appellate system, then, “[n]one of the[] [preceding decisions] are final” in an ultimate sense until any appeals are 

concluded. 3 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 411 

(1768). 
 

6 EDWARDS v. VANNOY 

GORSUCH, J., concurring 

after all that, Brown held, a federal district court could still 

vacate a final state court judgment based on any perceived

error of federal law it might detect—and do so though the 

entire state judicial system and this Court had seen nothing 

amiss. 344 U. S., at 465–487; id., at 506–507 (Frankfurter, 

J.).

The result? As Justice Jackson warned, habeas became 

little more than an ordinary appeal with an extraordinary 

Latin name. The Court “so departed from [the finality]

principle that the profession now believes that the issues 

[federal courts] actually consider [in] habeas corpus are 

substantially the same as would be considered on appeal.” 

Id., at 540 (Jackson, J., concurring in result). “The fatal 

sentence that in real life writes finis to many causes”— 

Judgment affirmed. or Certiorari denied.—became “in legal

theory . . . a complete blank.” Id., at 543. Justice Jackson 

feared that this result not only “trivializ[ed] . . . the writ,” 

but promised practical problems too. Id., at 536. A large 

new “haystack” of frivolous habeas petitions was sure to follow, making it that much harder for courts to identify the

meritorious “needle.” Id., at 537. The only solution Justice

Jackson could see was to hold fast to the traditional rule: A 

final judgment, after completion of trial and the exhaustion

of any direct appellate review, was res judicata, and the sole 

exception was a lack of jurisdiction. Id., at 543–544. 

Brown not only upended centuries of settled precedent 

and invited practical problems; it produced anomalies as 

well. The very same term it decided Brown, this Court rejected Brown’s fix-any-error approach for final judgments 

issued by military courts. Burns v. Wilson, 346 U. S. 137, 

142 (1953) (plurality opinion); id., at 147 (Minton, J., concurring in judgment). So only state convicts—not United

States service members—were afforded an additional avenue for appellate relief in the garb of habeas corpus proceedings. It turned out, too, that only state courts—not executive tribunals—were forced to suffer the indignity of 
 

 

 

Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021) 7 

GORSUCH, J., concurring 

having their final judgments reopened. So federal courts 

wound up with more power to reopen the judgments of a

different sovereign’s courts than the administrative proceedings of the federal government itself. See Rushing v. 

Wilkinson, 272 F. 2d 633, 641 (CA5 1959); M. Howe, Foreword: The Supreme Court, 1952 Term, 67 Harv. L. Rev. 91, 

160–162 (1953).

With time, these implications became clear and, as Justice Jackson predicted, Brown’s innovation proved unsustainable. The haystack just grew too large. During the

1960s, this Court incorporated the exclusionary rule 

against the States. Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U. S. 643, 655 (1961). 

It announced a Sixth Amendment right to a public defender. Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U. S. 335, 339–340, 342 

(1963). It barred the government from speaking to the defendant outside defense counsel’s presence. Massiah v. 

United States, 377 U. S. 201, 204–206 (1964). And it announced a new script governing police interrogations. Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436, 467–477 (1966). This proliferation of new federal procedural rights, combined with a 

federal post-conviction mechanism that functioned like an

ordinary appeal, soon yielded a giant haystack of habeas 

petitions.

For years, this Court struggled to devise rules for sorting

the hay from the needles. Its approach varied wildly and 

inconsistently over time. In a few cases, the Court held a 

new rule of criminal procedure should not apply retroactively to settled convictions. Tehan v. United States ex. rel. 

Shott, 382 U. S. 406, 409, n. 3, 419 (1966); Linkletter v. 

Walker, 381 U. S. 618, 622, 639–640 (1965). On occasion, 

though, it extended the benefit of a new rule to litigants

with final criminal judgments—sometimes only to the

named petitioner in this Court, Jackson v. Denno, 378 U. S. 

368, 377 (1964), other times to everyone laboring under a 

final judgment, McNerlin v. Denno, 378 U. S. 575, 575 

(1964) (per curiam). Justice Harlan called these divergent 
 

 

 

 

 

8 EDWARDS v. VANNOY 

GORSUCH, J., concurring 

results “an extraordinary collection of rules.” Desist v. 

United States, 394 U. S. 244, 256–257 (1969) (Harlan, J., 

dissenting). He even wondered whether they could

“properly be considered the legitimate products of a court of 

law.” Id., at 259. 

III 

It was only in this world that Teague’s question about the

retroactive application of new “watershed” rules of criminal 

procedure could even begin to make sense. In an effort to 

bring some coherence to the area, the Court refocused its 

attention on the terms of the federal habeas statute. The 

statute provides that “writs of habeas corpus may be 

granted”—not that they must be granted. 28 U. S. C. 

§ 2241(a) (emphasis added); see also id. § 2243. The law 

thus invests federal courts with equitable discretion to decide whether to issue the writ or to provide a remedy. 

Withrow v. Williams, 507 U. S. 680, 716 (1993) (Scalia, J.,

concurring in part and dissenting in part).3 

Exercising this remedial discretion, the Court began to 

develop doctrines aimed at returning the Great Writ closer 

to its historic office. It decided that some claims are not 

cognizable on federal habeas review if state courts provide 

a mechanism for review. Stone v. Powell, 428 U. S. 465, 

494–495 (1976). It established procedural default rules to

prevent habeas petitioners from evading independent and 

adequate state law grounds for sustaining their convictions. 

Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U. S. 72, 86–87 (1977). It crafted 

a heightened harmless error standard, calibrated to reflect

the finality interests at stake in the post-conviction context. 

Brecht v. Abrahamson, 507 U. S. 619, 633–638 (1993). And 

—————— 3That is how this Court reads nearly identical text in the Declaratory

Judgment Act (DJA). Because the DJA says federal courts “ ‘may declare 

the rights and other legal relations of any interested party,’ ” district 

courts “possess discretion” to award declaratory relief. Wilton v. Seven 

Falls Co., 515 U. S. 277, 282, 286 (1995). 
Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021) 9 

GORSUCH, J., concurring 

it applied abuse-of-the-writ rules to prevent an endless cycle of petition and re-petition by prisoners with nothing but 

time on their hands. McCleskey v. Zant, 499 U. S. 467, 489– 

493 (1991).

Chief among these new-but-old developments was 

Teague. Drawing on the historic role of habeas, the Court 

held that newly recognized rules of criminal procedure

should not normally apply to cases “which have become final.” 489 U. S., at 304–310.4 Hard experience since Brown 

had reminded the Court that finality, “the idea that at some 

point a criminal conviction reaches an end, a conclusion, a 

termination, ‘is essential to the operation of our criminal 

justice system.’” Prost v. Anderson, 636 F. 3d 578, 582 

(CA10 2011). One might “always continue to ask” whether 

a particular judgment was “correct.” P. Bator, Finality in 

Criminal Law and Federal Habeas Corpus for State Prisoners, 76 Harv. L. Rev. 441, 446–448 (1963). But if the rule of 

law means anything, it means the final result of proceedings in courts of competent jurisdiction establishes what is 

correct “in the eyes of the law.” Herrera v. Collins, 506 U. S. 

390, 399–400 (1993).5 

—————— 4Although the lead opinion in Teague garnered only a plurality, a majority of the Court adopted the plurality’s rule later that same year in 

Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U. S. 302, 313 (1989). 5Apparently believing our judge-made doctrines did not go far enough, 

Congress added further “new restrictions” of its own in the Antiterrorism 

and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA). Felker v. Turpin, 518 

U. S. 651, 664 (1996). But AEDPA creates only additional conditions to 

relief; it did not do away with the discretion afforded courts in the habeas 

statute, or the various rules this Court has formulated in the exercise of 

that discretion. As this Court has (unanimously) explained, “AEDPA did 

not codify Teague” and the one “neither abrogates [n]or qualifies the 

other.” Greene v. Fisher, 565 U. S. 34, 39 (2011). That is why Teague’s 

retroactivity bar operates “in addition” to AEDPA’s relitigation bar in 28 

U. S. C. § 2254(d). Horn v. Banks, 536 U. S. 266, 272 (2002) (per curiam). 

Because a retroactivity bar and a relitigation bar both pose threshold 

barriers, JUSTICE THOMAS’s concurrence highlights how AEDPA provides 
 

 

10 EDWARDS v. VANNOY 

GORSUCH, J., concurring 

IV 

While Teague did much to return the writ to its original

station, it didn’t quite complete the journey. After insisting

that final judgments cannot be reopened as a “general rule,” 

Teague left some wiggle room. It added that some new rules 

of criminal procedure might yet apply retroactively if they 

had “watershed” significance. 489 U. S., at 311. Why? Because “‘time and growth in social capacity, as well as judicial perceptions,’” might “‘alter our understanding of the 

bedrock procedural elements’” necessary to satisfy notions 

of “‘fairness.’” Ibid. To help the world know what a watershed rule might look like, the Court described it in various

ways—“bedrock,” “fundamental,” “central,” an “absolute 

prerequisite.” Id., at 311–314. A rule fitting that bill, 

Teague said, would do two things: (1) “‘significantly improve’” existing procedures for determining factual guilt or

innocence and (2) “implicate the fundamental fairness of 

the trial.” Id., at 312–313.6 

But all these words have yielded nothing. In more than 

three decades since Teague, not a single new rule of criminal procedure has satisfied its “watershed” test. Ante, at 

10–15. Nor is it as if we have lacked promising candidates. 

—————— 

an additional reason why the Fifth Circuit correctly denied a certificate 

of appealability here. Ante, at 5 (concurring opinion); see Miller-El v. 

Cockrell, 537 U. S. 322, 350 (2003) (Scalia, J., concurring). 6 Teague also discussed an exception to the finality rule for certain 

“substantive rules.” Because the parties agree that Ramos involved only 

a new rule of criminal procedure, little need be said about Teague’s “substantive rule” exception. But it is worth noting that substantive rules,

which place certain conduct “ ‘beyond the power of the criminal law-making authority to prescribe,’ ” id., at 307, bear at least some resemblance 

to this Court’s early cases finding a lack of jurisdiction over a defendant 

or an offense. See Ex parte Siebold, 100 U. S. (10 Otto), at 376; Ex parte 

Parks, 93 U. S. (3 Otto), at 20–21. Perhaps this aspect of Teague can be 

understood as accurately invoking the jurisdictional exception to the finality rule; perhaps not. See Brown, 344 U. S., at 533, n. 4 (Jackson, J., 

concurring in result). But that question is for another day. 
 

Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021) 11 

GORSUCH, J., concurring 

This Court has refused “watershed” status to new rules that 

seek to ensure death penalty decisions are made by jurors 

rather than judges. See Schriro v. Summerlin, 542 U. S. 

348 (2004) (denying watershed status to Ring v. Arizona, 

536 U. S. 584 (2002)). New rules designed to ensure race

discrimination plays no role in jury selection met the same 

fate even before Teague. See Allen v. Hardy, 478 U. S. 255 

(1986) (per curiam) (denying retroactive application to Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U. S. 79 (1986)). Rules that sought to

realign our jurisprudence with the original meaning of the 

Sixth Amendment’s Confrontation Clause have failed to 

qualify too. See Whorton v. Bockting, 549 U. S. 406 (2007) 

(denying watershed status to Crawford v. Washington, 541 

U. S. 36 (2004)).

The Court’s decision today retraces this familiar path. It 

denies “watershed” status to Ramos v. Louisiana, 590 U. S. 

___ (2020), a decision that (like Crawford) returned us to 

the original meaning of the Sixth Amendment—and one

that (like Ring and Batson) concerns a vital aspect of the 

jury trial right. The Court explains why this result necessarily follows from our post-Teague precedents: If so many 

other highly consequential rulings have failed to clear 

Teague’s bar, it’s hard to see how Ramos might. One could 

even say that any other result would defy this Court’s recent precedents. Ante, at 14. 

At the same time, though, one might also say these precedents illustrate how mystifying the whole Teague project

has been from its inception. If Teague only prohibits the 

retroactive application of new rules of criminal procedure, 

after all, it’s not exactly obvious why that prohibition applies to cases like Crawford or Ramos. Both decisions 

sought to realign this Court’s decisions with the original 

meaning of the Sixth Amendment; in that sense, the rights 

they recognized were anything but new. And to the extent 

Teague asks whether a new rule is “fundamental” or “bedrock,” it’s hard to see how rights originally memorialized in 
 

12 EDWARDS v. VANNOY 

GORSUCH, J., concurring 

the Constitution could fail to qualify. Certainly, this Court

is in no position to second-guess the judgment of those who 

wrote and ratified the Constitution. Surely, too, many of 

the other rules of criminal procedure this Court has found

less than “fundamental” since Teague seem anything but

that to those whose lives they affect. Nor is it only Teague’s 

results that mystify. The test itself has been fraught with

contradictions from the start. It asks litigants to be on the

lookout for new procedural protections “‘implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.’” Beard v. Banks, 542 U. S. 406, 417 

(2004). At the same time, we have been told, the fact that 

“a new procedural rule is ‘fundamental’ in some abstract 

sense is not enough.” Summerlin, 542 U. S., at 352. 

For me, it’s here where the history canvassed above matters. This Court’s (in)activity since Teague only begins to

make sense when viewed against the backdrop of the traditional rule that old judgments are impervious to new challenges. Yes, this Court’s decisions should apply to all cases

pending in trial courts and on direct appeal. But they 

should not apply retroactively in habeas. The reason has 

nothing to do with whether Members of this Court happen 

to think the rules they announce are “new” in some sense 

or insufficiently “fundamental” in another. It’s simpler

than that: The writ of habeas corpus does not authorize

federal courts to reopen a judgment issued by a court of

competent of jurisdiction once it has become final. Supra, 

at 2–4. 

It’s here, too, where today’s decision makes its real contribution. If Teague pointed us back in the direction of the

traditional rule, each of the cases that has followed in its 

wake has edged us, step-by-step, closer still. Today’s decision advances the progress by making express what has 

long been barely implicit: The “watershed” exception for 

new rules of criminal procedure is no exception at all. Ante, 

at 15. Not only does this development do much to honor the 

traditional understanding of habeas review and the great 
 

Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021) 13 

GORSUCH, J., concurring 

weight of this Court’s precedents throughout its history. It 

also allows us to retire a test that was unknown in law until 

1989 and whose contours remain unknowable decades 

later. It frees this Court from the dreary task of needing to 

concoct reasons to denigrate the importance of obviously 

important rules like those discussed in Ramos, Ring, Batson, and Crawford, which affect the lives and liberty of

countless individuals. It does away with the strange business of having to repackage old rules as new ones. And it 

eliminates the need for litigants and lower courts to endure 

years of protracted litigation—tangling with a contradictory test and seemingly inexplicable precedents—all sure to 

achieve nothing. The Court’s candor today is admirable— 

and correct.7 

With these observations, I am pleased to join the Court’s

opinion. My vote in similar cases to come will, I hope, “be 

guided as nearly as [possible] by the principles set forth

herein.” Brown, 344 U. S., at 548 (Jackson, J., concurring 

in result). 

—————— 7The dissent criticizes today’s decision as a departure from modern habeas precedent. Post, at 2; post, at 3, n. 2; post, at 12–13. But the dissent’s history is selective. The dissent champions decisions from the 

1950s, ’60s, and ’70s. But it disregards how those decisions departed

from a century of this Court’s precedents and the common law before 

that. Supra, at 5–8. At the same time, the dissent’s account overlooks 

this Court’s precedents refusing to afford retroactive application in every 

case since the 1980s. Post, at 10–11; post, at 12, n. 7. The dissent may 

prefer decisions within a particular 30-year window. But it is too much 

to say this preference is required to “[r]espect[] stare decisis.” Post, at 1, 

n. 1. 
_________________ 

_________________ 

Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021) 1 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES 

No. 19–5807 

THEDRICK EDWARDS, PETITIONER v. 

DARREL VANNOY, WARDEN 

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF 

APPEALS FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT 

[May 17, 2021] 

JUSTICE KAGAN, with whom JUSTICE BREYER and 

JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR join, dissenting. 

“A verdict, taken from eleven, [i]s no verdict at all,” this 

Court proclaimed just last Term. Ramos v. Louisiana, 590 

U. S. ___, ___−___ (2020) (slip op., at 4–5) (internal quotation marks omitted). Citing centuries of history, the Court 

in Ramos termed the Sixth Amendment right to a unanimous jury “vital,” “essential,” “indispensable,” and “fundamental” to the American legal system. Id., at ___, ___, ___ 

(slip op., at 4, 6, 7). The Court therefore saw fit to disregard 

stare decisis and overturn a 50-year-old precedent enabling 

States to convict criminal defendants based on non-unanimous verdicts.1 And in taking that weighty step, the Court 

also vindicated core principles of racial justice. For in the 

Court’s view, the state laws countenancing non-unanimous

verdicts originated in white supremacism and continued in

our own time to have racially discriminatory effects. See 

id., at ___−___ (slip op., at 2–3); id., at ___ (SOTOMAYOR, J., 

concurring in part) (slip op., at 4); id., at ___−___ 

—————— 1 I dissented in Ramos precisely because of its abandonment of stare 

decisis. See 590 U. S., at ___−___ (slip op., at 5–9) (ALITO, J., dissenting); 

see also Kimble v. Marvel Entertainment, LLC, 576 U. S. 446, 455 (2015) 

(“Respecting stare decisis means sticking to some wrong decisions”). Now 

that Ramos is the law, stare decisis is on its side. I take the decision on 

its own terms, and give it all the consequence it deserves. 
 

2 EDWARDS v. VANNOY 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

(KAVANAUGH, J., concurring in part) (slip op., at 12–15). 

Put all that together, and it is easy to see why the opinions 

in Ramos read as historic. Rarely does this Court make 

such a fundamental change in the rules thought necessary 

to ensure fair criminal process. If you were scanning a thesaurus for a single word to describe the decision, you would 

stop when you came to “watershed.” 

Yet the Court insists that Ramos’s holding does not count 

as a “watershed” procedural rule under Teague v. Lane, 489 

U. S. 288, 311 (1989) (plurality opinion). The result of today’s ruling is easily stated. Ramos will not apply retroactively, meaning that a prisoner whose appeals ran out before the decision can receive no aid from the change in law 

it made. So Thedrick Edwards, unlike Evangelisto Ramos, 

will serve the rest of his life in prison based on a 10-to-2

jury verdict. Only the reasoning of today’s holding resists 

explanation. The majority cannot (and indeed does not) 

deny, given all Ramos said, that the jury unanimity requirement fits to a tee Teague’s description of a watershed 

procedural rule. Nor can the majority explain its result by

relying on precedent. Although flaunting decisions since 

Teague that held rules non-retroactive, the majority comes

up with none comparable to this case. Search high and low 

the settled law of retroactivity, and the majority still has no

reason to deny Ramos watershed status. 

So everything rests on the majority’s last move—the overturning of Teague’s watershed exception. If there can never 

be any watershed rules—as the majority here asserts out of 

the blue—then, yes, jury unanimity cannot be one. The result follows trippingly from the premise. But adopting the 

premise requires departing from judicial practice and principle. In overruling a critical aspect of Teague, the majority 

follows none of the usual rules of stare decisis. It discards 

precedent without a party requesting that action. And it 

does so with barely a reason given, much less the “special 

justification” our law demands. Halliburton Co. v. Erica P. 
 

 

Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021) 3 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

John Fund, Inc., 573 U. S. 258, 266 (2014). The majority in

that way compounds its initial error: Not content to misapply Teague’s watershed provision here, see ante, at 10–14, 

the majority forecloses any future application, see ante, at 

14–15. It prevents any procedural rule ever—no matter 

how integral to adjudicative fairness—from benefiting a defendant on habeas review. Thus does a settled principle of

retroactivity law die, in an effort to support an insupportable ruling. 

I 

 Start with what Teague and its progeny repeatedly said

about what makes a new rule of criminal procedure “watershed” (so that, before today, the rule applied retroactively).2 

A watershed rule, we held, is “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.” Teague, 489 U. S., at 311 (plurality opinion)

(internal quotation marks omitted). Such a rule addresses 

one of “the bedrock procedural elements” of the criminal 

process. Ibid. (emphasis deleted). Or similarly stated, it

plays a “fundamental” and “central[ ]” role in a trial. Beard 

v. Banks, 542 U. S. 406, 418, 420 (2004). More specifically,

a new rule, to qualify as watershed, must be “essential to 

[the trial’s] fairness.” Whorton v. Bockting, 549 U. S. 406, 

418 (2007); see Teague, 489 U. S., at 312 (plurality opinion). 

And it must go to the defendant’s guilt or innocence, “prevent[ing] an impermissibly large risk of an inaccurate 

conviction.” Whorton, 549 U. S., at 418 (internal quotation 

marks omitted); see Teague, 489 U. S., at 312 (plurality 

opinion). Those requirements set a high bar. But they

capture—or anyway, were once meant to—a “small core of 

—————— 2Prior to Teague, the Court gave retroactive effect to a somewhat wider

range of new procedural rules. See ante, at 13, n. 5; Danforth v. Minnesota, 552 U. S. 264, 271–273 (2008). To find the no-retroactivity-ever

rule that the majority announces today, a time traveler would have to go

back to around 1950—when the Bill of Rights’ protections for criminal

defendants did not even apply to the States. See ibid. 
 

 

 

4 EDWARDS v. VANNOY 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

rules” needed to fairly adjudicate a defendant’s guilt. 

Beard, 542 U. S., at 417. 

The first clue that the unanimity rule falls within 

Teague’s small core is that the Court thought its adoption

justified overturning precedent. Ramos didn’t just announce a new rule. It reversed a prior, well-settled one. As 

the majority recounts, “Ramos repudiated this Court’s 1972 

decision in Apodaca v. Oregon, 406 U. S. 404, which had 

allowed non-unanimous juries in state criminal trials.” 

Ante, at 1. Such a toppling of precedent needs a special

justification—more than a run-of-the-mill claim of error. To 

meet that demand, the Ramos majority described Apodaca

as flouting the essential “meaning of the Sixth Amendment’s jury trial right,” as revealed in both historical practice and judicial decisions. 590 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 21). 

Two concurring Justices added, to support discarding this

“egregiously wrong” precedent, that the unanimity rule prevents improper verdicts: Apodaca “sanctions the conviction” 

of some defendants who would otherwise defeat the State’s 

efforts “to [meet] its burden” of proving guilt. 590 U. S., at 

___ (KAVANAUGH, J.) (slip op., at 12); id., at ___ 

(SOTOMAYOR, J.) (slip op., at 2). And the majority and concurrences alike invoked racial justice to support abandoning stare decisis, explaining how a non-unanimity rule has 

posed a special danger of canceling Black jurors’ votes. See 

id., at ___–___, ___ (slip op., at 1–2, 21); id., at ___ 

(SOTOMAYOR, J.) (slip op., at 4); id., at ___–___ 

(KAVANAUGH, J.) (slip op., at 12–15); infra, at 8. At bottom, 

then, the Court took the unusual step of overruling precedent for the most fundamental of reasons: the need to ensure, in keeping with the Nation’s oldest traditions, fair and 

dependable adjudications of a defendant’s guilt. In this 

much alone, Ramos’s reasoning evokes this Court’s descriptions of watershed rules.3 

—————— 3The majority misunderstands my point about the interaction between 
 

Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021) 5 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

And putting talk of stare decisis aside, there remains 

much more in Ramos to echo Teague. If, as today’s majority 

says, Teague is full of “adjectives,” ante, at 10, so too is Ramos—and mostly the same ones. Jury unanimity, the 

Court pronounced, is an “essential element[ ]” of the jury 

trial right, and thus is “fundamental to the American 

scheme of justice.” 590 U. S., at ___–___ (slip op., at 6–7). 

The Court discussed the rule’s “ancient” history—“400

years of English and American cases requiring unanimity” 

leading up to the Sixth Amendment. Id., at ___, ___ (slip 

op., at 15, 11). As early as the 14th century, English common law recognized jury unanimity as a “vital right.” Id., 

at ___ (slip op., at 4). Adopting that view, the early American States likewise treated unanimity as an “essential feature of the jury trial.” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 5). So by the

time the Framers drafted the Sixth Amendment, “the right 

to a jury trial meant a trial in which the jury renders a

unanimous verdict.” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 12) (emphasis 

in original). Because that was so, no jury verdict could 

stand (or in some metaphysical sense, even exist) absent 

full agreement: “A verdict, taken from eleven, was no verdict at all.” Id., at ___–___ (slip op., at 4–5) (internal quotation marks omitted). Unanimity served as a critical safeguard, needed to protect against wrongful deprivations of 

citizens’ “hard-won liberty.” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 15). Or 

as Justice Story summarized the law a few decades after 

—————— 

stare decisis and Teague. I am not saying that if a “right is important 

enough to justify overruling” precedent, then it is “important enough to

apply retroactively.” Ante, at 16. (If that were my claim, this dissent 

would be far shorter.) Rather, the overruling of precedent—and more, 

the justifications given to support that overruling—are elements to consider when deciding on a rule’s watershed status. Or, as I say above, “a 

first clue.” Here, that clue cuts against the majority: Ramos overturned 

precedent (rather than just announcing a new rule) on grounds strikingly 

reminiscent of Teague’s criteria for watershed status. Still more clues, 

pointing in the same direction, appear in the coming pages . . . . 
 

 

 

6 EDWARDS v. VANNOY 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

the Founding: To obtain a conviction, “unanimity in the verdict of the jury is indispensable.” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 6). 

If a rule so understood isn’t a watershed one, then nothing is. (And that is, of course, what the majority eventually 

says.) Once more, from the quotations just above: “fundamental,” “essential,” “vital,” “indispensable.” No wonder today’s majority declares a new-found aversion to “adjectives”—or, as a concurring opinion says, “all these words.” 

Ante, at 10; ante, at 10 (GORSUCH, J., concurring). The unanimity rule, as Ramos described it, is as “bedrock” as bedrock comes. Teague, 489 U. S., at 315 (plurality opinion).

It is as grounded in the Nation’s constitutional traditions—

with centuries-old practice becoming part of the Sixth

Amendment’s original meaning. And it is as central to the 

Nation’s idea of a fair and reliable guilty verdict. When can 

the State punish a defendant for committing a crime? Return again to Ramos, this time going back to Blackstone:

Only when “the truth of [an] accusation” is “confirmed by

the unanimous suffrage” of a jury “of his equals and neighbours.” 590 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 4) (quoting 4 Commentaries on the Laws of England 343 (1769)). For only then is

the jury’s finding of guilt certain enough—secure enough,

mistake-proof enough—to take away the person’s freedom. 

Twice before, this Court retroactively applied rules that

are similarly integral to jury verdicts. First, in Ivan V. v. 

City of New York, 407 U. S. 203, 204 (1972) (per curiam), we

gave “complete retroactive effect” to the rule of In re Winship, 397 U. S. 358 (1970), that a jury must find guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Like Ramos, Winship rested on 

an “ancient” legal tradition incorporated into the Constitution. 397 U. S., at 361. As in Ramos, that tradition served 

to “safeguard men” from “unjust convictions, with resulting 

forfeitures” of freedom. 397 U. S., at 362. And as in Ramos, 

that protection plays a “vital” part in “the American scheme 

of criminal procedure.” 397 U. S., at 363–364. With all that 

established, the Ivan V. Court needed just two pages to hold 
 

 

Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021) 7 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

Winship retroactive, highlighting the reasonable-doubt 

standard’s “indispensable” role in “reducing the risk” of 

wrongful convictions. 407 U. S., at 204–205. Second, in 

Brown v. Louisiana, 447 U. S. 323 (1980), we retroactively 

applied the rule of Burch v. Louisiana, 441 U. S. 130 (1979),

that a six-person guilty verdict must be unanimous. Think 

about that for a moment: We held retroactive a unanimity 

requirement, no different from the one here save that it applied to a smaller jury. The reasoning should by now sound 

familiar. Allowing conviction by a non-unanimous jury “impair[s]” the “purpose and functioning of the jury,” undermining the Sixth Amendment’s very “essence.” Brown, 447 

U. S., at 331 (plurality opinion). It “raises serious doubts 

about the fairness of [a] trial.” Id., at 335, n. 13. And it 

fails to “assure the reliability of [a guilty] verdict.” Id., at 

334. So when a jury has divided, as when it has failed to 

apply the reasonable-doubt standard, “there has been no

jury verdict within the meaning of the Sixth Amendment.” 

Sullivan v. Louisiana, 508 U. S. 275, 280 (1993).4 

—————— 4The majority argues that Ivan V. and Brown applied these new rules 

only to cases on direct appeal. See ante, at 13, n. 5. But that isn’t right. 

Although Ivan V. itself involved a direct appeal, the Court has made clear 

that the “complete retroactive effect” Ivan V. gave Winship included 

cases in habeas. See, e.g., United States v. Johnson, 457 U. S. 537, 562– 

563, n. 21 (1982). And similarly, lower courts uniformly understood 

Brown to govern habeas cases, even though a concurring opinion (which

supplied the ruling’s fifth and sixth votes) addressed only cases on direct 

appeal. See, e.g., Atkins v. Listi, 625 F. 2d 525, 526 (CA5 1980); see also 

Brown, 447 U. S., at 337 (opinion of Powell, J., joined by Stevens, J.). 

Those applications to habeas cases make sense because the Court of that 

time did not often distinguish in its retroactivity rulings between direct

and collateral review. See Stovall v. Denno, 388 U. S. 293, 300–301 

(1967). For that reason, the majority must fall back on the argument 

that “Brown and Ivan V. were pre-Teague decisions” and “Teague tightened the previous standard” for retroactivity. Ante, at 13, n. 5. That is 

true enough, see supra, at 3, n. 2, but irrelevant here given Brown and 

Ivan V’s reasoning. As just noted, each of those decisions said everything 

a court would say today in designating a new rule “watershed”—in 

essence, that the rule is central to the process of fairly deciding on a 
 

8 EDWARDS v. VANNOY 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

And something still more supports retroactivity here, for 

the opinions in Ramos (unlike in Winship or Burch) relied

on a strong claim about racial injustice. The Court detailed 

the origins of Louisiana’s and Oregon’s non-unanimity 

rules, locating them (respectively) in a convention to “establish the supremacy of the white race” and “the rise of the 

Ku Klux Klan.” 590 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 2) (internal

quotation marks omitted). Those rules, the Court explained, were meant “to dilute the influence [on juries] of 

racial, ethnic, and religious minorities”—and particularly,

“to ensure that African-American juror service would be

meaningless.” Ibid. (internal quotation marks omitted). 

Two concurring opinions linked that history to current

practice. “In light of the[ir] racist origins,” JUSTICE 

KAVANAUGH stated, “it is no surprise that non-unanimous

juries can make a difference”—that “[t]hen and now” they 

can “negate the votes of black jurors, especially in cases 

with black defendants.” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 13); see id., 

at ___ (SOTOMAYOR, J.) (slip op., at 4). But that statement 

precludes today’s result. If the old rule functioned “as an 

engine of discrimination against black defendants,” id., at 

___ (KAVANAUGH, J.) (slip op., at 13), its replacement must 

“implicat[e]” (as watershed rules do) “the fundamental fairness and accuracy of the criminal proceeding,” Beard, 542 

U. S., at 417 (internal quotation marks omitted). Or as 

JUSTICE KAVANAUGH put the point more concretely, the

unanimity rule then helps prevent “racial prejudice” from

resulting in wrongful convictions. Ramos, 590 U. S., at ___ 

(slip op., at 15). The rule should therefore apply not just 

forward but back, to all convictions rendered absent its protection. 

II 

The majority argues in reply that the jury unanimity rule 

—————— 

defendant’s guilt. 
Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021) 9 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

is not so fundamental because . . . . Well, no, scratch that. 

Actually, the majority doesn’t contest anything I’ve said

about the foundations and functions of the unanimity requirement. Nor could the majority reasonably do so. For 

everything I’ve said about the unanimity rule comes

straight out of Ramos’s majority and concurring opinions. 

Just check the citations: I’ve added barely a word to what 

those opinions (often with soaring rhetoric) proclaim. Start 

with history. The ancient foundations of the unanimous 

jury rule? Check. The inclusion of that rule in the Sixth 

Amendment’s original meaning? Check. Now go to function. The fundamental (or bedrock or central) role of the 

unanimous jury in the American system of criminal justice? 

Check. The way unanimity figures in ensuring fairness in

criminal trials and protecting against wrongful guilty verdicts? Check. The link between those purposes and safeguarding the jury system from (past and present) racial 

prejudice? Check. In sum: As to every feature of the unanimity rule conceivably relevant to watershed status, Ramos has already given the answer—check, check, check—

and today’s majority can say nothing to the contrary.5 

—————— 5The majority does try to say that the plurality opinion in Ramos nonetheless “plainly foreshadowed today’s decision” by noting that Teague’s 

watershed test was “demanding by design,” in recognition of the States’ 

reliance interests. Ante, at 16–17 (internal quotation marks omitted); 

see also ante, at 17–19 (repeating the assertion twice more). But the 

Ramos plurality’s description of the watershed test was nothing more

than objective fact: Yes, the watershed test was purposefully demanding. 

As to whether the watershed test was so demanding as to exclude the

jury unanimity rule, here is what the plurality had to say: “Whether the

right to jury unanimity applies to cases on collateral review is a question 

for a future case where the parties will have a chance to brief the issue 

and we will benefit from their adversarial presentation.” Ramos, 590 

U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 24). Not a lot of “plain[] foreshadow[ing]” there. 

Only a fair bit of wisdom about how to resolve legal issues—which, as I’ll 

later discuss, the majority could usefully have considered before overruling the watershed exception. See infra, at 13. 
 

 

10 EDWARDS v. VANNOY 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

Instead, the majority relies on decisions holding non-retroactive various other—even though dissimilar—procedural rules. In making that argument from past practice,

the majority adopts two discrete tactics. Call the first 

“throw everything against the wall.” Call the second “slice 

and dice.” Neither can avail to render the jury unanimity 

rule anything less than what Ramos thought it—as the majority concedes, “momentous.” Ante, at 14. 

As its first move, the majority lists as many decisions 

holding rules non-retroactive as it can muster. See ante, at 

11–12 (reviewing a “long line of cases”). The premise here

is that sheer volume matters: The majority presents the 

catalog as if every rule is as important as every other and 

as if comparing any to the unanimity requirement is beside 

the point. But that idea founders on this Court’s constant 

refrain that watershed rules are only a small subset of procedural rules. See, e.g., Graham v. Collins, 506 U. S. 461, 

478 (1993). For under that view (as under the very meaning

of “watershed”), nothing could be less surprising than that

non-watershed rules greatly outnumber watershed ones. 

That inexorable fact cannot refute the designation of any 

given rule—much less of jury unanimity—as watershed. 

And the majority’s kitchen-sink list becomes yet less probative of the issue here because most of its bulk comes from 

decisions on sentencing. See ante, at 11 (citing Beard, 542 

U. S., at 408; O’Dell v. Netherland, 521 U. S. 151, 153 

(1997); Lambrix v. Singletary, 520 U. S. 518, 540 (1997); 

Sawyer v. Smith, 497 U. S. 227, 229 (1990); Schriro v. Summerlin, 542 U. S. 348, 352 (2004)). But Teague itself explains why sentencing procedures are not watershed: A watershed rule, the Court said there, must go to the jury’s

“determination of innocence or guilt.” 489 U. S., at 313 (plurality opinion); see Beard, 542 U. S., at 417. So the majority’s indiscriminate inventory of non-retroactive rules cannot get it home. 
 

 

 

 

Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021) 11 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

Enter the majority’s second stratagem, which tries to conquer by dividing. Here, the majority picks out “three aspects of Ramos” pointing toward watershed status, and 

names one prior decision to match each of the three. Ante, 

at 12. So in addressing the unanimity rule’s “significance,”

the majority notes that the Court once held the jury-trial

right non-retroactive. Ante, at 12–13 (citing DeStefano v. 

Woods, 392 U. S. 631, 633 (1968) (per curiam) and Duncan 

v. Louisiana, 391 U. S. 145 (1968)). In tackling Ramos’s return to “original meaning,” the majority points to our decision that an originalist rule about hearsay evidence should 

not apply backward. Ante, at 13 (citing Whorton, 549 U. S., 

at 421 and Crawford v. Washington, 541 U. S. 36 (2004)). 

And in discussing Ramos’s role in “prevent[ing] racial discrimination,” the majority invokes our denial of retroactivity to a rule making it easier to prove race-based peremptory strikes. Ante, at 13–14 (citing Allen v. Hardy, 478 U. S. 

255, 261 (1986) (per curiam) and Batson v. Kentucky, 476 

U. S. 79 (1986)).

What the majority doesn’t find—or even pretend to—is

any decision corresponding to Ramos on all of those dimensions. Take just a pair of examples. The Court has never 

suggested that requiring a bench trial has race-based purposes or effects. See DeStefano, 392 U. S., at 633–635.6 

—————— 6Even on the metric of significance alone, the Court has not previously 

ranked the jury-unanimity and jury-trial rights as today’s majority does. 

As earlier noted, the Court in Brown found a unanimity rule retroactive 

despite its earlier holding that the jury-trial right was not. See supra, at 

6–7. The Court explained that the accuracy and fairness concerns raised

by divided juries—where, by definition, at least one person retains reasonable doubt—exceed those arising from judicial verdicts. See Brown, 

447 U. S., at 334–335, n. 13 (plurality opinion). In insisting otherwise, 

the majority falls prey to a common greater-includes-the-lesser fallacy—

akin to the view that if a State can eliminate a jury, it can impose jury 

rules of whatever kind it likes. See ante, at 12–13 (reasoning that the 

treatment of a “broader” right controls that of a “subsidiary” right); 

Brown, 447 U. S., at 334–335, n. 13 (rejecting precisely that view). 
 

 

12 EDWARDS v. VANNOY 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

Similarly, the Court thought its new rule on hearsay evidence of less than towering import: Calling the rule “limited 

in scope,” we doubted that it would have any effect on the 

“accuracy of factfinding.” Whorton, 549 U. S., at 419. I’ll 

resist making like points about other permutations because

the main point here is a general one. The majority must 

slice and dice in this way—dividing Ramos into three for 

purposes of comparison—because it cannot find any rule 

analogous to jury unanimity on all relevant fronts. And 

that is for a simple reason: No procedure adopted since 

Teague so comprehensively fulfills that decision’s criteria 

for retroactivity. If any rule is watershed, it is jury unanimity. See supra, at 6. 

So the majority is left to overrule Teague’s holding on watershed rules.7 On the last page or so of its merits discussion (before it turns to pre-butting this dissent), the majority eliminates the watershed exception, declaring it “long 

past time” to do so. Ante, at 15. Teague had said there 

would not be “many” (retroactive) watershed rules. 489 

U. S., at 313 (plurality opinion). The majority now says

there will be none at all. If that is so, of course, jury unanimity cannot be watershed. Finally, the majority offers an 

—————— 7 In describing the majority as overruling Teague, I do not mean it overrules only Teague. That decision doesn’t stand alone in stating the watershed exception as governing law. As I count, the Court has recited the 

exception 17 more times before today. See Montgomery v. Louisiana, 577 

U. S. 190, 198 (2016); Welch v. United States, 578 U. S. 120, 128 (2016); 

Chaidez v. United States, 568 U. S. 342, 347, n. 3 (2013); Danforth, 552 

U. S., at 266, 274–275; Whorton v. Bockting, 549 U. S. 406, 416 (2007); 

Beard v. Banks, 542 U. S. 406, 416–417 (2004); Horn v. Banks, 536 U. S. 

266, 271, n. 5 (2002) (per curiam); Tyler v. Cain, 533 U. S. 656, 665 

(2001); Bousley v. United States, 523 U. S. 614, 619–620 (1998); O’Dell v. 

Netherland, 521 U. S. 151, 156–157 (1997); Lambrix v. Singletary, 520 

U. S. 518, 539 (1997); Gray v. Netherland, 518 U. S. 152, 170 (1996); Caspari v. Bohlen, 510 U. S. 383, 396 (1994); Graham v. Collins, 506 U. S., 

461, 477–478 (1993); Gilmore v. Taylor, 508 U. S. 333, 345 (1993); Saffle 

v. Parks, 494 U. S. 484, 494–495 (1990); Sawyer v. Smith, 497 U. S. 227, 

241–242 (1990). 
 

 

 

Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021) 13 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

intelligible reason for declining to apply Ramos retroactively.

But in taking that road, the majority breaks a core judicial rule: respect for precedent. Stare decisis is a foundation 

stone of the rule of law, “promot[ing] the evenhanded, predictable, and consistent development of legal principles, foster[ing] reliance on judicial decisions, and contribut[ing] to

the actual and perceived integrity of the judicial process.” 

Payne v. Tennessee, 501 U. S. 808, 827 (1991). Adherence 

to precedent is, of course, “not an inexorable command.” 

Id., at 828. Ramos itself teaches that much. But Ramos 

also shows how high stare decisis sets the bar for overruling 

a prior decision. To reverse course, we insist on compelling 

reasons, thorough explanation, and careful attention to 

competing interests. But not here. The majority crawls under, rather than leaps over, the stare decisis bar. 

To begin with, no one here asked us to overrule Teague. 

This Court usually confines itself to the issues raised and 

briefed by the parties. See, e.g., United States v. SinenengSmith, 590 U. S. ___, ___ (2020) (slip op., at 3) (discussing 

“the principle of party presentation”). There may be reasons to ignore that rule in one or another everyday case.

But to do so in pursuit of overturning precedent is nothing 

short of extraordinary. Cf. Ramos, 590 U. S., at ___, n. 4 

(KAVANAUGH, J.) (slip op., at 9, n. 4) (An “important factor” 

protecting stare decisis “is that the Court typically does not

overrule a precedent unless a party requests overruling”).

We are supposed to (fairly) apply the prevailing law until a 

party asks us to change it. And when a party does make

that request, we are supposed to attend to countervailing 

arguments—which no one here had a chance to make. That 

orderly process, skipped today, is what enables a court to 

arrive at a considered decision about whether to overthrow 

precedent.

Equally striking, the majority gives only the sketchiest of 
 

 

14 EDWARDS v. VANNOY 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

reasons for reversing Teague’s watershed exception. In deciding whether to depart from precedent, the Court usually 

considers—and usually at length—a familiar set of factors

capable of providing the needed special justification. See, 

e.g., Knick v. Township of Scott, 588 U. S. ___, ___ (2019) 

(slip op., at 20) (listing such considerations). The majority

can’t be bothered with that customary, and disciplining,

practice; it barely goes through the motions. Seldom has 

this Court so casually, so off-handedly, tossed aside precedent. In its page of analysis, the majority offers just one

ground for its decision—that since Teague, the Court has 

not identified a new rule as watershed, and so “the purported exception has become an empty promise.” Ante, at 

15. But even viewed in the abstract, that argument does

not fly. That the Court has not found a watershed rule since 

Teague does not mean it could or would not in the future. 

Teague itself understood that point: It saw value in the watershed exception even while recognizing that watershed 

rules would be few and far between. 489 U. S., at 313 (plurality opinion). And viewed in the context of this case, the 

majority’s argument positively craters. For the majority today comes face-to-face with a rule that perfectly fits each of 

Teague’s criteria: Jury unanimity, as described in Ramos, 

is watershed—even though no prior rule was. See supra, at 

4–8. That airtight match between Ramos and Teague refutes the majority’s one stated reason for overruling the latter decision. The majority could not rely on the absence of 

watershed rules to topple Teague if it had just faithfully applied that decision to this case. 

In choosing otherwise, the majority imposes a steep price

for overruling Apodaca in Ramos. Taking with one hand

what it gave with the other, the Court curtails Ramos’s effects by expunging Teague’s provision for watershed rules. 

And so too the Court limits the consequences of any similarly fundamental change in criminal procedure that may 

emerge in the future. For the first time in many decades 
 

Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021) 15 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

(since long before Teague, see supra, at 3, n. 2), those convicted under rules found not to produce fair and reliable 

verdicts will be left without recourse in federal courts.8 

I would not discard Teague’s watershed exception and so

keep those unfairly convicted people from getting new trials. Instead, I would accept the consequences of last Term’s 

holding in Ramos. A decision like that comes with a promise, or at any rate should. If the right to a unanimous jury

is so fundamental—if a verdict rendered by a divided jury 

is “no verdict at all”—then Thedrick Edwards should not 

spend his life behind bars over two jurors’ opposition. I respectfully dissent. 

—————— 8The majority’s final claim is that it is properly immune from this criticism—that I cannot “turn around and impugn” its ruling—because

“criminal defendants as a group are better off under Ramos and today’s

decision, taken together, than they would have been if [my] dissenting 

view had prevailed in Ramos.” Ante, at 19. The suggestion is surprising.

It treats judging as scorekeeping—and more, as scorekeeping about how 

much our decisions, or the aggregate of them, benefit a particular kind 

of party. I see the matter differently. Judges should take cases one at a 

time, and do their best in each to apply the relevant legal rules. And 

when judges err, others should point out where they went astray. No one 

gets to bank capital for future cases; no one’s past decisions insulate 

them from criticism. The focus always is, or should be, getting the case 

before us right.