Court Opinion

ID: 9430767
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:30:32.097801+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:26.032035
License: Public Domain

Chief Justice Rehnquist,
dissenting.
As I stated in my dissenting opinion in Shea v. Louisiana, 470 U. S. 51, 61 (1985), I am willing to adopt both aspects of the approach to retroactivity propounded by Justice Harlan in his opinion in Mackey v. United States, 401 U. S. 667, 675 (1971). In Justice Harlan’s view, new constitutional rules governing criminal prosecutions should apply retroactively for cases pending on direct appeal when the rule is announced, and, with narrow exceptions, should not apply in collateral proceedings challenging convictions that become final before the rule is announced. The majority today adopts only a portion of this approach. I therefore join Justice White’s dissent, agreeing with him that, under the present state of our retroactivity jurisprudence, the majority erred in rejecting the reasons cited in Allen v. Hardy, 478 U. S. 255 (1986), for making Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U. S. 79 (1986), nonretroactive.