Opinion ID: 2353039
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Retroactivity of Blakely

Text: [¶ 9] The petitioners contend that the United States Supreme Court articulated a new constitutional right in Blakely by specifically defining the standard to be used in Apprendi. The State, however, suggests that Blakely is not a new rule. The State asserts that Apprendi established a new rule of criminal procedure that Blakely clarified. [¶ 10] Pursuant to 15 M.R.S. § 2128(5) (2006), a one-year limitations period applies to petitions for post-conviction review. That period begins to run the latest of: A. The date of the final disposition of the direct appeal from the underlying criminal judgment or the expiration of the time for seeking the appeal; B. The date on which the constitutional right, state or federal, asserted was initially recognized by the Law Court or the Supreme Court of the United States, if the right has been newly recognized by that highest court and made retroactively applicable to cases on collateral review; or . . . . Id. [¶ 11] Carmichael filed his second petition for post-conviction review years after the final disposition of his underlying criminal conviction. However, he filed his second petition two months after the United States Supreme Court decided Blakely. Thus, for Carmichael's petition to be timely, we must determine that Blakely newly recognized a constitutional right that is retroactively applicable to Carmichael's collateral appeal. See id. [¶ 12] Blakely emerged in the wake of Apprendi. In Apprendi, the United States Supreme Court held that [o]ther than the fact of a prior conviction, any fact that increases the penalty for a crime beyond the prescribed statutory maximum must be submitted to a jury, and proved beyond a reasonable doubt. 530 U.S. at 490, 120 S.Ct. 2348. Four years later, the United States Supreme Court determined that: the statutory maximum for Apprendi purposes is the maximum sentence a judge may impose solely on the basis of the facts reflected in the jury verdict or admitted by the defendant. In other words, the relevant statutory maximum is not the maximum sentence a judge may impose after finding additional facts, but the maximum he may impose without any additional findings. Blakely, 542 U.S. at 303-04, 124 S.Ct. 2531 (citations omitted) (emphasis in original). The Court decided Blakely on a direct appeal. See id. at 301, 124 S.Ct. 2531. Thus, the question remains whether Blakely applies retroactively to cases on collateral appeal. [¶ 13] In Teague v. Lane, the United States Supreme Court fashioned a three-part test to determine whether a constitutional rule of criminal procedure may apply to a case on collateral appeal. 489 U.S. 288, 300-16, 109 S.Ct. 1060, 103 L.Ed.2d 334 (1989). The Court later summarized the three-steps: First, the court must determine when the defendant's conviction became final. Second, it must ascertain the legal landscape as it then existed, and ask whether the Constitution, as interpreted by the precedent then existing, compels the rule. That is, the court must decide whether the rule is actually new. Finally, if the rule is new, the court must consider whether it falls within either of the two exceptions to nonretroactivity. Beard v. Banks, 542 U.S. 406, 411, 124 S.Ct. 2504, 159 L.Ed.2d 494 (2004) (citations omitted). Each of these steps is examined in turn.
[¶ 14] For the purpose of determining retroactivity, state convictions are final when the defendant has exhausted the right to directly appeal in state court and the time for filing a writ of certiorari has expired or the United States Supreme Court has denied the petition for certiorari. Id. Carmichael did not file a writ of certiorari after we affirmed his underlying conviction on June 20, 2000. Pursuant to United States Supreme Court Rule 13, Carmichael had ninety days after our decision to file a writ of certiorari, after which the conviction became final. See SUP. CT. R. 13(1).
[¶ 15] The second step in the Teague analysis requires a determination of whether Blakely was dictated by then-existing precedent- Apprendi. See Beard, 542 U.S. at 413, 124 S.Ct. 2504. This determination includes assessing whether the unlawfulness of [Carmichael's] conviction was apparent to all reasonable jurists. See id. (quotation marks omitted). The content and reasoning of a dissent in the case determining the new rule may provide support that the rule is new. See id. at 415-16, 124 S.Ct. 2504. However, the mere existence of a dissent does not suffice to show that a rule is new. Id. n. 5 at 416, 124 S.Ct. 2504. [¶ 16] To support the proposition that Blakely created a new rule for the purposes of determining retroactivity, courts have commonly cited the fact that following Apprendi every circuit court that confronted the issue addressed in Blakely reached a conclusion opposite to the Court. See e.g., Schardt v. Payne, 414 F.3d 1025, 1035 (9th Cir.2005) (collecting cases); Lilly v. United States, 342 F.Supp.2d 532, 538-39 n. 5 (W.D.Va.2004) (same); State v. Febles, 210 Ariz. 589, 115 P.3d 629, 633-34 n. 5 (Ct.App.2005) (same). Indeed, in determining that Blakely was a new rule, the Colorado Supreme Court noted that Justice O'Connor in her Blakely dissent explained that only one court had ever applied Apprendi to invalidate a sentencing guidelines scheme. People v. Johnson, 142 P.3d 722, 726 (Colo.2006) (citation omitted). As explained in Beard, the fact that Blakely was a 5-4 decision lends further support for the fact that it is a new rule. 542 U.S. at 415-16, 124 S.Ct. 2504. [¶ 17] Except for the Court in Blakely, virtually every court that applied Apprendi ruled that it did not dictate invalidating sentencing guidelines schemes. This fact conclusively resolves that Blakely's outcome would not have been apparent to a reasonable jurist. We determine that the Blakely decision constitutes a new rule for the purposes of determining its retroactive effect.
[¶ 18] Teague allows the retroactive application of new rules of constitutional criminal procedure only in two circumstances or exceptions. The new rule must be: (1) substantive, or (2) procedural. Schriro v. Summerlin, 542 U.S. 348, 351-52, 124 S.Ct. 2519, 159 L.Ed.2d 442 (2004). A rule is substantive if it alters the range of conduct or the class of persons that the law punishes. Id. at 353, 124 S.Ct. 2519. If procedural, the rule must be a watershed rule of criminal procedure. Id. at 352, 124 S.Ct. 2519 (quotation marks omitted).
[¶ 19] Blakely affected the manner in which defendants are sentenced. It requires facts that increase a defendant's sentence to either be admitted by the defendant or to be found beyond a reasonable doubt by a fact-finder. The rule in Blakely was founded entirely on the Sixth Amendment's guarantee for a jury trial. Blakely did not alter the range of conduct that was punishable, nor did it apply to a particular class of persons. Rules that allocate decisionmaking authority [from judge to jury] are prototypical procedural rules. . . . Summerlin, 542 U.S. at 353, 124 S.Ct. 2519. We determine that Blakely is not a substantive rule.
[¶ 20] To apply retroactively under Teague as a procedural rule, Blakely must have announced a watershed rule of criminal procedure that implicates the fundamental fairness and accuracy of the criminal proceeding. Id. at 355, 124 S.Ct. 2519 (citation omitted). This exception applies only to those new procedures without which the likelihood of an accurate conviction is seriously diminished. Teague, 489 U.S. at 313, 109 S.Ct. 1060. [¶ 21] Almost every court that has considered the issue has determined that Teague does not allow the retroactive application of Blakely. Smart v. State, 146 P.3d 15, 50 (Alaska App. 2006) (Mannheimer, J. concurring). Courts that provided the most complete and persuasive analysis of whether Blakely was a watershed rule of criminal procedure addressed the issue in two steps: (1) analyzing Blakely's changing of the fact-finder from judge to jury, and (2) analyzing the change in the burden of proof to beyond a reasonable doubt. See, e.g., Schardt, 414 F.3d at 1036; Lloyd v. United States, 407 F.3d 608, 613-15 (3d Cir.2005) (determining under Booker not Blakely ); United States v. Price, 400 F.3d 844, 848-49 (10th Cir. 2005); Johnson, 142 P.3d at 726-28. [¶ 22] The United States Supreme Court's decision in Summerlin determines the first step of the inquiry. In Summerlin, the Court considered whether a new procedural rule announced in Ring v. Arizona, 536 U.S. 584, 122 S.Ct. 2428, 153 L.Ed.2d 556 (2002), applied retroactively to cases on collateral review. Summerlin, 542 U.S. at 358, 124 S.Ct. 2519. The Court explained that Ring announced that an aggravating factor which permitted the death penalty if found beyond a reasonable doubt, must be found by a jury not a judge. Id. at 351, 124 S.Ct. 2519. [¶ 23] The Court, in Summerlin, determined that judicially-based fact-finding did not seriously diminish accuracy so that there was an impermissibly large risk of punishing conduct that the law did not reach. Id. at 355-56, 124 S.Ct. 2519 (quotation marks omitted). The Court concluded that the evidence of whether juries or judges were better fact-finders was simply too varied to conclude that judicial fact-finding was less accurate at all, let alone conclude that it was seriously less accurate than jury fact-finding. See id. Thus, Summerlin supports the conclusion that the shift in fact-finder does not amount to a watershed rule of criminal procedure. [¶ 24] However, Summerlin is only partially applicable to the determination of whether Blakely is a watershed rule of criminal procedure. Ring shifted the same burden of proofbeyond a reasonable doubtfrom the judge to jury. Thus, as the Court noted in Summerlin, Apprendi's requirement that all facts be proved beyond a reasonable doubt was already satisfied. Id. at 351 n. 1, 124 S.Ct. 2519. The sentencing scheme at issue in Blakely, however, did not provide that judges had to find sentencing enhancements beyond a reasonable doubt. See Blakely, 542 U.S. at 299, 124 S.Ct. 2531. [¶ 25] This distinction between Summerlin and Blakely requires the second step of the analysis: determining whether Blakely's holding that a jury must find the existence of sentencing facts beyond a reasonable doubt constitutes a watershed rule of criminal procedure. [¶ 26] To answer this question, courts using the two-step analysis have analyzed the retroactivity of Apprendi. Apprendi announced a rule that altered the standard of proof required for sentencing enhancements to beyond a reasonable doubt. After Apprendi, every circuit court, save the District of Columbia Circuit which has yet to address the issue, determined that Apprendi did not create a watershed rule of criminal procedure. Lilly, 342 F.Supp.2d at 538 n. 4 (collecting cases). [3] Thus, the conclusion follows that the Blakely burden of proof requirement likewise does not make for a watershed rule of criminal procedure. [¶ 27] We find the above two-step analysis supports the conclusion that Blakely is not a watershed rule of criminal procedure entitled to retroactive application. In addition to the two-step analysis, we note, as many courts using the analysis also have, that a watershed rule of criminal procedure is a rule that is central to the accurate determination of innocence or guilt. Beard, 542 U.S. at 417, 124 S.Ct. 2504 (quotation marks omitted). It is axiomatic that Blakely concerns sentencing, which occurs after the determination of guilt. Blakely does not affect the accuracy of the guilt phase of a criminal proceeding. We thus conclude that Blakely is not a watershed rule of criminal procedure.