Opinion ID: 147435
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: The majority's cutoff creates a twilight zone

Text: If the relevant cutoff date is the date of the last state-court decision on the merits, we would create a twilight zone for criminal defendants. Consider the possible times relative to a state court conviction when a decision by the Supreme Court is announced: (1) prior to the last state-court decision on the merits; (2) between the last state-court decision on the merits and finality; and (3) after the conviction is final. If it were decided in the first period (prior to the last state-court decision on the merits), a state court would have to apply it to be consistent with Griffith. If it were decided in the third period (after finality), habeas relief would be available as a new rule under Teague if the decision announced a watershed rule or placed certain conduct beyond the power of the state to proscribe. However, if it were decided in the second period (the twilight zone between the last state-court decision on the merits and before finality), the majority's time cutoff would nonetheless consider it not to be clearly established Federal law and would bar habeas relief because the rule did not exist at the time of the last state-court decision on the merits. The majority reaches this conclusion even though, as discussed above, a rule announced pre-finality is an old rule for Teague purposes and Griffith requires its application on direct and collateral review. [13] So inflexible is the plain reading the majority adopts that even new rules that pass the Teague test for retroactive application would not entitle a petitioner to habeas relief. New rules for Teague purposes are always decided after the date of the relevant state-court decision, as they come into being after finality. Yet the majority would not consider the new rule to be clearly established Federal law because the new rule did not yet exist, and no relief could be granted. [14] Such a Catch-22 reading of § 2254(d)(1) effectively disregards Griffith and Teague even as the Supreme Court has maintained that both decisions remain viable. [15] As discussed above, even though at first it seems conceptually difficult to say that a state court unreasonably applied Supreme Court precedent that did not yet exist, the Supreme Court's retroactivity analysis treats the precedent as if it existed at the time of that prior state court proceeding. Under Griffith, Supreme Court decisions are retroactively applied to those convictions not yet final at the time of the decision. Furthermore, if the state court neglects to apply the rule retroactively to convictions not yet final, this can be still corrected after finality on collateral review. See Whorton, 549 U.S. at 416, 127 S.Ct. 1173 ([O]ld rule[s] appl[y] both on direct and collateral review. (emphasis added)). Under Teague, Supreme Court decisions are retroactively applicable even to convictions that were already final at the time of the decision if it announces a watershed rule or places certain conduct beyond the power of the state to proscribe. We know from Whorton that § 2254(d)(1) does not overrule Griffith and Teague, but by deeming irrelevant any case that post-dates the relevant state-court decision, the majority implicitly disregards both Griffith and Teague. While another Circuit Court has rejected the majority's cutoff on fears of the potential for state court ... subver[sion]... by the simple expedient of summarily affirming a lower court's decision, Foxworth v. St. Amand, 570 F.3d 414, 432 (1st Cir.2009), its reasoning does not depend on a distrust of the judicial integrity of state courts. A well-meaning state court system could innocently neglect to apply Griffith after its final decision on the merits, but before the conviction becomes final. If a state court were to ignore the mandate to apply the new rule to all cases still pending on direct appeal or not yet final, it would similarly undermine the integrity of judicial review. That would leave collateral review by habeas corpus as the only remedy to correct the mistake. Surely a criminal defendant is entitled to recourse if the state courts simply forget to check for new, relevant Supreme Court precedent prior to finality. [16] This helps to avoid the situation where similarly situated defendants receive disparate treatment based on the happenstance of state court attention (or inattention). [17] Yet, under the majority's selection of temporal cutoff, even that remedy would be foreclosed whenever the state courts declined to apply the rule without explanation. This would leave affected habeas petitioners as unfairly treated relative to other similarly situated individuals who were lucky enough to have the state courts apply the new rule.
It is not our place to second-guess the Supreme Court when it has held that: (1) Supreme Court decisions handed down prior to finality must be applied on both direct and collateral review under Griffith; (2) Teague and Griffith have continuing vitality after AEDPA; (3) all nine Justices in Williams agreed that an old rule under Teague qualifies as clearly established Federal law; and (4) its decisions since Williams have not definitively set a temporal cutoff. In the absence of an express statement to the contrary by the Supreme Court (and there is none), we are bound to apply the clearly expressed (and still controlling) jurisprudence of Griffith and Teague. The Court may wish, in the AEDPA context, to cut back on Griffith and Teague, but it, not us, possesses the power to overrule its precedent. I would hold that the cutoff date for clearly established Federal law is not prescribed by 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1). The retroactive application of constitutional rules to criminal cases is governed by Griffith and Teague, and I would look first to whether Gray was decided before or after finality to determine which rule applies. As here Gray was decided prior to finality, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court should have considered it in the course of fulfilling its responsibilities under Griffith. When it did not do so, the District Court on habeas review needed to correct this failure to consider Gray. Accordingly, I would vacate its judgment and remand for application of Gray to Greene's Confrontation Clause claim. For these reasons, I respectfully dissent from all but Part II of the majority opinion.