Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/18pdf/17-532_q86b.pdf
Page Number: 36.0

Cite as:  587 U. S. ____ (2019) 

11 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

retardation”  did  not  render  a  defendant  ineligible  for  a 
death  sentence  but  was  treated  as  simply  a  mitigating 
factor to be taken into account in weighing whether such a 
sentence  should  be  imposed.    When  Bies  contested  his 
death  sentence  on  appeal,  the  state  appellate  court  ob-
served  that  he  suffered  from  a  mild  form  of  intellectual 
disability, but it nevertheless affirmed his sentence.  Years 
later,  in  Atkins  v.  Virginia,  536  U. S.  304  (2002),  this 
Court  ruled  that  an  intellectually  disabled  individual
cannot  be  executed,  and  the  Sixth  Circuit  then  held  that 
the  state  court’s  prior  statements  about  Bies’s  condition
barred his execution under issue-preclusion principles. 

This Court reversed, and its primary reason for doing so 
has no relation to the question presented here.  We found 
that issue preclusion was not available to Bies because he 
had  not  prevailed  in  the  first  action;  despite  the  state 
court’s  recognition  of  mild  intellectual  disability  as  a 
mitigating factor, it had affirmed his sentence.  As we put
it,  “[i]ssue  preclusion  . . .  does  not  transform  final  judg-
ment losers . . . into partially prevailing parties.” Bies, 556 
U. S., at 829; see also id., at 835. 

Only after providing this dispositive reason for rejecting
the Sixth Circuit’s invocation of issue preclusion did we go
on  to  cite  the  Restatement’s  discussion  of  the  change-in-
law  exception.    And  we  then  quickly  noted  that  the  issue
addressed  by  the  state  appellate  courts  prior  to  Atkins 
(“[m]ental  retardation  as  a  mitigator”)  was  not  even  the 
same issue as the issue later addressed after Atkins.  Bies, 
supra, at 836 (the two “are discrete legal issues”).  So Bies 
is very far afield.5 

—————— 

5 Nor  are  the  other  cases  cited  by  the  majority  more  helpful  to  the
Court’s  position.  Commissioner  v.  Sunnen,  333  U. S.  591  (1948),  and 
Limbach  v.  Hooven  &  Allison  Co.,  466  U. S.  353  (1984)—and,  indeed, 
Montana  v.  United  States,  440  U. S.  147  (1979)—are  tax  cases  that 
hold, consistent with the general policy against “discriminatory distinc-
tions  in  tax  liability,”  Sunnen,  333  U. S.,  at  599,  that  issue  preclusion