Opinion ID: 75071
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Unadjudicated Crimes

Text: Housel next argues that the Eighth Amendment’s requirement of reliability in death sentencing forbade the jury from weighing his unadjudicated crimes in Iowa, New Jersey, and Texas as nonstatutory aggravators until the jury had found, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he had committed the offenses. Like the district court, we reject this argument, although for a different reason. Housel’s argument is not novel. But it has never been accepted in any form by a majority of this court or the Supreme Court. See, e.g., Williams v. Lynaugh, 484 U.S. 935, 937-38, 108 S. Ct. 311, 313 (1987) (Marshall, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari, addressing use of unadjudicated-crimes evidence in support of a statutory aggravating factor); Devier v. Zant, 3 F.3d 1445, 1467 (11th Cir. 1993) (Kravitch, J., specially concurring) (arguing for the adoption of Housel’s proposed constitutional 14 rule); see also Milton v. Procunier, 744 F.2d 1091, 1097 (5th Cir. 1984) (rejecting the argument that admission of evidence of unadjudicated crimes at sentencing violates an unspecified constitutional right). Perhaps since last a court visited the question Eighth Amendment jurisprudence has evolved to recognize the right that Housel espouses. But we need not reach the merits of the question in this case. New rules of constitutional law are not a proper ground for relief in collateral proceedings. Lambrix v. Singletary, 520 U.S. 518, 52728, 117 S. Ct. 1517, 1525 (1997). This nonretroactivity rule, born in Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288, 109 S. Ct. 1060 (1989), is a threshold issue, Lambrix, 520 U.S. at 524, 117 S. Ct. at 1523, and one that we have discretion to raise sua sponte, see Caspari v. Bohlen, 510 U.S. 383, 389, 114 S. Ct. 948, 953 (1994) (“[A] federal court may, but need not, decline to apply Teague if the State does not argue it.”). The interests of comity— especially here, where Housel did not offer his present constitutional arguments to the trial court or the Georgia Supreme Court — persuade us to exercise that discretion. To determine if a rule is new, Teague requires us to “survey the legal landscape,” as of the date that Housel’s conviction became final, to determine whether the relevant constitutional rule (here, one requiring a threshold jury finding of “guilt” of unadjudicated crimes before the jury considers them in death sentencing) “was 15 dictated by then-existing precedent — whether, that is, the unlawfulness of [Housel’s] conviction was apparent to all reasonable jurists.” Lambrix, 520 U.S. at 527-28, 117 S. Ct. at 1525 (emphasis in original). Housel’s conviction became final on August 25, 1988, when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to rehear its denial of Housel’s petition for certiorari to review the affirmance of his conviction. At that time, and even years later, the legal landscape was barren of all but the most general support for the rule Housel urges. General principles do not dictate rules. See Gray v. Netherland, 518 U.S. 152, 169, 116 S. Ct. 2074, 2084 (1996) (rejecting the dissent’s argument that a general right of due process — a meaningful opportunity to explain or deny evidence — dictated a rule that defendant be apprized of exactly the evidence that the prosecution would offer). Justices Marshall and Brennan’s 1987 dissent in Williams v. Lynaugh, which contended that the Eighth Amendment prohibits the introduction of unadjudicated-crimes evidence altogether in capital sentencing, could cite no more specific authority for their arguments than the plurality opinion’s statement in Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U.S. 280, 305, 96 S. Ct. 2978, 2991 (1976), that because death is different, “there is a corresponding difference in the need for reliability in the determination that death is an appropriate punishment.” Williams, 16 484 U.S. at 938, 108 S. Ct. at 313 (Marshall, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari).7 Six years later, well after the finality of Housel’s conviction, Judge Kravitch of this court looked to similarly broad principles to justify an Eighth Amendment right to a threshold finding, at a death sentencing, of beyond-a-reasonable-doubt guilt on unadjudicated crimes used as future-dangerousness evidence. Judge Kravitch believed that such an instruction would balance the need for reliability articulated in Woodson with the state’s “important interest” in presenting “all relevant evidence regarding the defendant’s character.” Devier, 3 F.3d at 1467 (Kravitch, J., specially concurring). But the rule she cogently supported was suggested, not dictated, by the precedent she cited. Nor is Housel’s proposed rule, and we therefore conclude that it would be new. Housel maintains, nonetheless, that the new rule he proposes falls within Teague’s exception for “watershed rules of criminal procedure.” Saffle v. Parks, 494 U.S. 484, 495, 110 S. Ct. 1257, 1264 (1990). The Supreme Court has emphasized the narrowness of this exception and held up Gideon v. Wainwright’s8 right to counsel as a benchmark of the advance in fairness and accuracy that a watershed rule must have. 7 Justice Marshall also felt the need to urge the Court to overrule Williams v. New York, 337 U.S. 241, 69 S. Ct. 1079 (1949), the decision in which the Court rejected 7-2 a dueprocess challenge to a judge’s reliance, at death sentencing, on unadjudicated-crimes information developed in a presentence investigation by a probation officer. 8 372 U.S. 335, 83 S. Ct. 792 (1963). 17 See id. Housel’s rule would, perhaps, promote some marginal reliability in death sentencing. But it is only marginal; the jury would still hear potentially prejudicial evidence of unadjudicated crimes, tempered only by a requirement of an intermediate finding of “guilt” midway through the process before they weighed those crimes in the balance. The slight rigor conferred by this intermediate finding is not enough to give the rule the “primacy and centrality” of Gideon. Id. We thus think that the exception does not apply. Because Housel’s proposed rule is new, and does not qualify for an exception to the nonretroactivity doctrine, that doctrine bars relief. The district court thus properly denied relief on this claim, as well.