Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-5924_n6io.pdf
Page Number: 26

Cite as:  590 U. S. ____ (2020) 

23 

Opinion of the Court 
Opinion of GORSUCH, J. 

“tsunami” of follow-on litigation.67 

The overstatement may be forgiven as intended for dra-
matic effect, but prior convictions in only two States are po-
tentially affected by our judgment.  Those States credibly
claim that the number of nonunanimous felony convictions
still on direct appeal are somewhere in the hundreds,68 and 
retrying or plea bargaining these cases will surely impose a 
cost.  But new rules of criminal procedures usually do, often 
affecting  significant  numbers  of  pending  cases  across  the 
whole country.  For example, after Booker v. United States 
held that the Federal Sentencing Guidelines must be advi-
sory  rather  than  mandatory,  this  Court  vacated  and  re-
manded nearly 800 decisions to the courts of appeals.  Sim-
ilar  consequences  likely  followed  when  Crawford  v. 
Washington  overturned  prior  interpretations  of  the  Con-
frontation Clause69 or Arizona v. Gant changed the law for 
searches incident to arrests.70  Our decision here promises
to cause less, and certainly nothing before us supports the 
dissent’s surmise that it will cause wildly more, disruption 
than these other decisions. 

2 
The  second  and  related  reliance  interest  the  dissent 
seizes  upon  involves  the  interest  Louisiana  and  Oregon
have in the security of their final criminal judgments.  In 
light of our decision today, the dissent worries that defend-
ants  whose  appeals  are  already  complete  might  seek  to 

—————— 

67 Post, at 1, 19. 
68 Brief  for  State  of  Oregon  as  Amicus  Curiae  13  (“In  2018  alone  . . . 
there were 673 felony jury trials in Oregon, and studies suggest that as 
many as two-thirds of those cases would have had a non-unanimous ver-
dict”).    At  most,  Oregon  says  the  number  of  cases  remaining  on  direct 
appeal and affected by today’s decision “easily may eclipse a thousand.” 
Id., at 12 (emphasis added). 

69 541 U. S. 36, 60–63 (2004). 
70 556 U. S. 332, 345–347 (2009).