Opinion ID: 2341959
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Retroactivity of Martin

Text: The question then is whether Appellant may use the Martin rule reaffirmed today to reopen his RCr 11.42 proceedings and litigate those issues previously held to be procedurally barred. Because his conviction was final, having been affirmed on direct appeal, and his collateral attack was completed when Martin was rendered, Appellant can only benefit from the new rule if it is to be applied retroactively. Whether a new rule based on state law and announced by one of this Court's opinions is to be applied retroactively is one of first impression. Retroactivity of new federal constitutional rules is controlled by Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288, 109 S.Ct. 1060, 103 L.Ed.2d 334 (1989), which held that [u]nless they fall within an exception to the general rule, new constitutional rules of criminal procedure will not be applicable to those cases which have become final before the new rules are announced. Id. at 310, 109 S.Ct. 1060. [5] The only exceptions are when the new rule places certain kinds of primary, private individual conduct beyond the power of the criminal law-making authority to proscribe ... [or] it requires the observance of those procedures that ... are implicit in the concept of ordered liberty. Id. at 307, 109 S.Ct. 1060 (citations and internal quotation marks omitted) (second omission in original). Under Teague , once a conviction becomes final, that is, it has gone through the direct appeal process and been affirmed, the new rule is not applicable, even if the collateral attack is pending when, or has begun after, the new decision is rendered. However, Teague is not binding on the states if they choose to broaden the class of retroactively applicable rules. Danforth v. Minnesota, ___ U.S. ___, 128 S.Ct. 1029, 169 L.Ed.2d 859 (2008). Nor is Teague binding as to a new rule grounded solely in state law (as opposed to the federal constitution). American Trucking Associations, Inc. v. Smith, 496 U.S. 167, 177, 110 S.Ct. 2323, 110 L.Ed.2d 148 (1990) (plurality opinion) (When questions of state law are at issue, state courts generally have the authority to determine the retroactivity of their own decisions.). This Court applied the Teague test in evaluating the retroactivity of new federal constitutional rules in Bowling v. Commonwealth, 163 S.W.3d 361, 370 (Ky. 2005). Under that decision, Kentucky's constitutional retroactivity rule is no broader than that employed by the federal courts. However, the rule contained in Martin was not of a constitutional dimension; rather, it was simply one of criminal procedure springing from this Court's own rules as to whether certain issues may be raised in a collateral attack. As such, this Court is free to adopt whatever standard of retroactivity it finds reasonable. Nevertheless, Teague 's proscription against applying new rules retroactively once a judgment is final on direct review makes sense, given the interest in finality of judgments. This is especially so in a case like this one where the initial conviction had been final for 17 years when Martin was rendered. Questions of retroactivity usually involve a new rule that would be applied in the course of a direct appeal, e.g., Griffith v. Kentucky, 479 U.S. 314, 107 S.Ct. 708, 93 L.Ed.2d 649 (1987) (addressing retroactive applicability of Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 106 S.Ct. 1712, 90 L.Ed.2d 69 (1986)), which is part of the reason such rules are not to be retroactively applied in the context of collateral attacks. The retroactivity determination in this case is more complicated than usual because Martin announced a procedurea new class of ineffective assistance claims to be applied within the collateral attack itself, rather than a rule to be applied at trial or raised on direct appeal. In fact, as noted above, this Court has held that claims of ineffective assistance of counsel should not ordinarily be addressed in the course of a direct appeal. See Humphrey v. Commonwealth, 962 S.W.2d 870, 872 (Ky.1998). It makes little sense then to determine retroactivity by reference to when the conviction itself became final on direct appeal. Otherwise, Martin himself could not have enjoyed the benefit of this Court's decision, since his conviction was already final on direct appeal. Instead, the relevant judgment in determining retroactivity in a case like this one, where the new rule relates to procedures within the collateral attack itself, is the order resolving the collateral attack. The cutoff for retroactivity of a new collateral attack rule is thus when the order resolving a collateral attack becomes final, and any such new rule announced after the finality of such a collateral attack order is not retroactively applicable. Thus, a new rule related to an RCr 11.42 proceeding would generally not be retroactively applicable to any other case where the order denying the RCr 11.42 motion was final (that is, having been appealed and affirmed). As applied in a case like this one, such a new rule could not be raised by way of a CR 60.02 motion used to collaterally attack an RCr 11.42 order. In this case, the order denying Appellant's RCr 11.42 motion is therefore the relevant judgment. Appellant's RCr 11.42 collateral attack was denied in 1996 and the order was affirmed in 1999, making it final for almost seven years when Martin was decided. Thus, if Martin announced a new rule, it cannot be retroactively applied to Appellant's case to reopen the RCr 11.42 proceedings. Resolution of Appellant's current claim then turns on whether Martin announced a new rule of procedure. As noted in Teague , [i]t is admittedly often difficult to determine when a case announces a new rule.... 489 U.S. at 301, 109 S.Ct. 1060. The Supreme Court chose to employ the following guideline: In general... a case announces a new rule when it breaks new ground or imposes a new obligation on the States or the Federal Government. To put it differently, a case announces a new rule if the result was not dictated by precedent existing at the time the defendant's conviction became final. Id. (citations omitted). Again, this Court finds this standard to be the appropriate one in determining whether a rule is new for the purposes of retroactivity. Recognizing that this Court might employ a standard at least similar to that in Teague , Appellant argues that Martin did not announce a new rule and that it instead merely clarified the law that had been established in an earlier case, Humphrey v. Commonwealth , in which several claims of ineffective assistance of counsel related to failures to object at trial were raised on direct appeal. [6] The Martin Court cited the following language from Humphrey : [A] better approach would have been to have presented the unpreserved errors, if such could have been done in good faith, as palpable error under RCr 10.26. If that approach had been taken unsuccessfully, an ineffective assistance of counsel claim based on those unpreserved errors would still be available in a collateral attack proceeding. Id. at 873, quoted in Martin, 207 S.W.3d at 2. The rule in Martin , however, was not dictated by this language, which was merely obiter dictum, or by any other then existing case law. In fact, the language was contradicted by the Sanborn line of cases, which began after Humphrey was decided. Clearly then, Martin broke new ground by allowing claims that were procedurally barred under the prior case law. Therefore, this Court can only conclude that instead of clarifying the law, Martin established a new rule. Finally, Appellant claims that this Court's own procedural rules allow him to avoid the general rule against retroactive application of a decision. He first argues that the purpose of CR 60.02, under which the motion giving rise to this appeal was filed, is to allow a court to correct a mistake. Thus, he claims barring retroactive application would undermine the purpose and language of the rule. This is incorrect. As Appellant correctly notes, CR 60.02 replaced the common law writ of coram nobis. That writ, however, was aimed at correcting factual errors, not legal errors. Barnett v. Commonwealth, 979 S.W.2d 98 (Ky.1998). Appellant is not seeking remediation of a factual error; rather, he is seeking to correct the legal decision that his ineffective assistance claims were procedurally barred, a decision that was correct under the case law in existence at the time. A change in the law simply is not grounds for CR 60.02 relief except in aggravated cases where there are strong equities. Reed v. Reed, 484 S.W.2d 844, 847 (Ky.1972). This is not such a case. Appellant has received significant direct and collateral review at the state and federal levels since his conviction some 25 years ago. His previous sentence has been reduced by gubernatorial order. The equities do not weigh in favor of using CR 60.02 to apply Martin 's change in the law to Appellant's case. Appellant also argues that because new rules are frequently announced and applied in the appeals of RCr 11.42 decisions, even though the convictions addressed by those motions are final, the same relief should be available to him to avoid inconsistency by this Court. He notes specifically that the defendant in Martin effectively enjoyed the retroactive application of the new rule because his direct appeal was concluded and thus his conviction was final. This argument was addressed somewhat tangentially above. The defendant in Martin was able to enjoy the benefit of the new rule because it announced a new rule of procedure to be applied in RCr 11.42 proceedings, one of which was the source of the appeal in that case. Appellant's RCr 11.42 proceeding was concluded and final long before Martin was decided.