Court Opinion

ID: 9491833
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:24:56.534287+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:57.941497
License: Public Domain

HAMILTON, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and concurring in the judgment:
I concur in the opinion of the court except Part II that concludes that Yeatts’ claim that the trial court deprived him of due process by refusing to permit him to inform the jury that, taking into account the twenty-year *267sentence he received for the robbery conviction, he would not be eligible for parole for thirty years if he were given a life sentence for Dodson’s murder is procedurally defaulted. In my view, there was no procedural default because the Commonwealth waived this affirmative defense by failing to plead it in the district court. However, because I believe that Yeatts’ claim is barred by the non-retroactivity principle announced in Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288, 310, 109 S.Ct. 1060, 103 L.Ed.2d 334 (1989) (holding that a new rule of constitutional criminal procedure is not applicable to cases that became final before the new rule was announced), a defense pled by the Commonwealth in the district court, see (J.A. 794-97), I concur in the court’s judgment.