Court Opinion

ID: 9499714
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:56:07.099189+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:59:41.295318
License: Public Domain

BOYCE F. MARTIN, JR., Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I join the result reached by the majority, except for its conclusion in Part II.B. regarding the retroactive application of the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Booker, 543 U.S. 220, 125 S.Ct. 738, 160 L.Ed.2d 621 (2005). The majority’s analysis presents this issue fairly, and finds support in our precedent. Even so, I dissent to underscore what I believe to be an important theoretical difference that I have regarding Booker’s retroactive application.
I have previously written, and continue to believe, that Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466, 120 S.Ct. 2348, 147 L.Ed.2d 435 (2000), commanded the Supreme Court’s subsequent decisions in Blakely v. Washington, 542 U.S. 296, 124 S.Ct. 2531, *340159 L.Ed.2d 403 (2004), and Booker. See United States v. Koch, 383 F.3d 436, 443 (6th Cir.2004) (en banc) (Martin, J., dissenting) (“The seeds of Blakely were sown in Apprendi[], in which the Supreme Court held that ‘other 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.’ ”). The Supreme Court confirmed this belief in Booker itself when it stated, succinctly and unequivocally, that “we reaffirm our holding in Apprendi: Any fact (other than a prior conviction) which is necessary to support a sentence exceeding the maximum authorized by the facts established by a plea of guilty or a jury verdict must be admitted by the defendant or proved to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt.” Booker, 543 U.S. at 244, 125 S.Ct. 738. As I am inclined to think the Court meant what it said, I believe that neither Blakely nor Booker created a new rule, but merely applied the rule already laid down in Apprendi. The rule from Booker should therefore apply retroactively to habeas petitioners, like the Valentines, whose convictions became final after the Court issued its decision in Ap-prendi.
I.
At the outset, I do not believe that this Court’s decision in Humphress v. United States, 398 F.3d 855 (6th Cir.2005), controls the result here. The conviction of the defendant in Humphress became final before the Supreme Court’s decision in Apprendi, as the majority acknowledges. As a result, the question faced by the panel in Humphress was not, as it is here, whether Apprendi dictated the result in Booker, but rather whether the rule from Booker was dictated by precedent that predated Apprendi. I agree with the end result reached in Humphress because I believe that Apprendi itself announced a new rule, and that petitioners whose convictions predated this decision would be barred from obtaining relief under Ap-prendi, Blakely, or Booker. To the extent that the Humphress panel discussed whether Blakely or Apprendi dictated the result in Booker, however, this analysis is dicta, as it was unnecessary to reach the conclusion that no precedent at the time the petitioner’s conviction became final (before Apprendi) dictated the result in Booker.1 See Central Virg. Cmty. College v. Katz, 546 U.S. 356, 126 S.Ct. 990, 163 L.Ed.2d 945 (2006) (“[W]e are not bound to follow our dicta in a prior case in which the point now at issue was not fully debated.”) (citing Cohens v. Virginia, 6 Wheat. 264, 19 U.S. 264, 5 L.Ed. 257 (1821) (“It is a maxim not to be disregarded, that general expressions, in every opinion, are to be taken in connection with the case in which those expressions are used. If they go beyond the case, they may be respected, but ought not to control the judgment in a subsequent suit when the very point is presented for decision.”)). The panel’s view in Humphress may well be informative with respect to the question of whether reasonable jurists believed Booker was compelled by Blakely for purposes of examining Booker's, retroactive application under Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288, 109 *341S.Ct. 1060, 103 L.Ed.2d 334 (1989). It does not, however, act as a binding precedent from this Court on the issue we face here.2
Under Teague, “[ujnless they fall within an exception to the general rule, new constitutional rules of criminal procedure will not be applicable to those cases which have become final before the new rules are announced.” 489 U.S. at 310, 109 S.Ct. 1060. Thus, if the rule from Booker was new, and not dictated by Apprendi, there is little doubt that the petitioners here could not benefit from it, as it was not part of the legal landscape at the time of their convictions (leaving to the side for now any discussion of the Teague exceptions). See Beard v. Banks, 542 U.S. 406, 413, 124 S.Ct. 2504, 159 L.Ed.2d 494 (2004). The majority effectively catalogues a number of judicial opinions that like Humphress, concluded that Apprendi did not dictate Booker, either in holdings or in dicta. These opinions are relevant to show that not all reasonable jurists believed in the inevitability of Booker, which, under Teag-ue’s progeny, indicates that Booker created a new rule after the petitioners’ convictions became final and from which they cannot now benefit. See Beard, 542 U.S. at 413, 124 S.Ct. 2504. Under this conventional approach, even if all the members of our panel were inclined to believe that Booker was dictated by Apprendi, the fact that many of our colleagues previously believed otherwise would render the rule from Booker new, despite our current beliefs to the contrary. This leads me to ponder a question that I am not sure has been answered by the Supreme Court or this Court: Does the “apparent to all reasonable jurists” inquiry, which is relevant under Teague and its progeny to determining a rule’s “newness,” apply with the same force to a strictly federal rule of criminal procedure, raised in a habeas challenge to a federal conviction under 28 U.S.C. § 2255, as it does in habeas proceedings addressing state convictions under 28 U.S.C. § 2254?3
Teague itself arose in the context of a habeas review of a state court conviction, *342and did not address the appropriate retro-activity analysis in habeas reviews of federal conviction. 489 U.S. 288, 328, 109 S.Ct. 1060, 103 L.Ed.2d 334 (Brennan, J., dissenting) (“The plurality does not address the question whether the rule it announces today extends to claims brought by federal, as well as state, prisoners.”). The Teague majority justified its rule against the retroactive application of new rules of criminal procedure on two grounds: (1) comity toward state court adjudications, and (2) the finality of criminal judgments. Teague, 489 U.S. at 308, 109 S.Ct. 1060 (“[W]e have recognized that interests of comity and finality must also be considered in determining the proper scope of habeas review.”); Beard, 542 U.S. at 412, 124 S.Ct. 2504 (“Teague’s, nonre-troactivity principle acts as a limitation on the power of federal courts to grant ‘habe-as corpus relief to ... state prisoner[s].... This should make clear that the Teague principle protects not only the reasonable judgments of state courts but also the States’ interest in finality quite apart from their courts.’ ”). Only one of these justifications — the finality of criminal judgments — is relevant in habeas cases seeking relief from convictions in federal court.
Teague’s concern with finality on its own likely supports the general rule of applying the case’s basic premise to section 2255 petitions. That is to say that as a general matter, as with state court prisoners, federal prisoners should only be able to rely on rules that were part of the legal landscape at the time their convictions became final, based on the value of repose, and the importance of having some eventual endpoint in all litigation. Because concerns with comity are reduced — if not nonexistent — in the context of section 2255, however, it would seem to me that a bit more scrutiny is warranted in determining what the legal landscape actually was, and whether a given rule was “dictated by precedent existing at the time the defendant’s conviction became final.” Teague, 489 U.S. at 301, 109 S.Ct. 1060 (emphasis in original).
As discussed above, the “dictated by pri- or precedent” inquiry typically turns on whether'reasonable jurists, in cases prior to the decision in which the “new rule” was announced, would have deemed its outcome to be ordained by then-existing precedent. See, e.g., Beard, 542 U.S. at 413, 124 S.Ct. 2504 (grounding the inquiry in whether “the unlawfulness of [respondent’s] conviction was apparent to all reasonable jurists”); Humphress, 398 F.3d at 860 (same). This deferential approach might make good sense in the section 2254 context. Its focus on the divergent opinions of federal and state court judges recognizes that sometimes reasonable minds can differ over the development of legal rules. In such instances, where the application of an existing rule to a somewhat nuanced situation is debatable, the state courts should not necessarily be subject to Monday-morning quarterbacking every time they are eventually proven wrong on an issue. See, e.g., Beard, 542 U.S. at 412, 124 S.Ct. 2504 (“Teague’s nonretroactivity principle acts as a limitation on the power of federal courts to grant ‘habeas corpus relief to ... state prisoners].’ ”) (quoting Caspari v. Bohlen, 510 U.S. 383, 390, 114 S.Ct. 948, 127 L.Ed.2d 236 (1994) (emphasis added)); id. at 423, 124 S.Ct. 2504 (Souter, J., dissenting) (“[T]he function of Teague’s reasonable-jurist standard is to distinguish those developments in this Court’s jurisprudence that state judges should have anticipated from those they could not have been expected to foresee.” (emphasis added)); Butler v. McKellar, 494 U.S. 407, 414, 110 S.Ct. 1212, 108 L.Ed.2d 347 (1990) (“The ‘new rule’ principle therefore validates reasonable, good-faith interpretations of existing precedents *343made by state courts even though they are shown to be contrary to later decisions.” (emphasis added)). This concern is explicitly recognized in Teague: “[s]tate courts are understandably frustrated when they faithfully apply existing constitutional law only to have a federal court discover, during a [habeas] proceeding, new constitutional commands.” 489 U.S. at 310, 109 S.Ct. 1060 (quoting Engle v. Isaac, 456 U.S. 107, 128 n. 33, 102 S.Ct. 1558, 71 L.Ed.2d 783. (1982) (emphasis added)).
These quotations clearly reveal that the standard new rule inquiry and its reference to opinions of reasonable jurists is largely based on concerns with federalism and comity, and demonstrates deference to reasonable state court interpretations of the law. Even where the “reasonable jurists” to whom we look for guidance are federal judges, their opinions can serve as a proxy for whether a similar state court decision was reasonable. So long as state courts are applying Supreme Court case law in good faith, there is diminished justification for burdening their quasi-sovereign judicial machinery with the retroactive application of new rules in cases that have become final.
In a section 2255 case, however, where comity and federalism are irrelevant, there is much less need to defer to the divergent views of federal judges who, in hindsight, did not correctly apply existing precedent to a new case. We are, after all, members of inferior courts established by the same sovereign (unlike state court judges), and if the Supreme Court says we were wrong, we should take our medicine and gladly apply the correct rule retroactively, rather than clinging to vacated misapplications of the law to prove that a Supreme Court rule is “new” (which conveniently allows us to convince ourselves that we could not have been wrong in the first place). Nor can our difference of opinion serve as a proxy for why a prior, now invalidated decision should be deferred to as a reasonable application of the Constitution, as it might in the section 2254 context.
In fact, a less deferential approach in section 2255 cases to the divergent opinions of reasonable jurists than in section 2254 cases would parallel the standard of review codified by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (“AEDPA”). Specifically, section 2254(d)(1) imposes a very deferential standard of review in ha-beas cases challenging state court convictions, allowing reversal only where the state court decision “was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States.” This provision has no counterpart providing a standard of review in section 2255 cases, and they are generally reviewed de novo. See Moss v. United States, 323 F.3d 445, 454 (6th Cir.2003).4 *344The different standard of review used in habeas petitions challenging state court convictions versus that used in petitions challenging federal convictions supports, at least by analogy, a similar context-based difference in the manner in which Teague applies to determine a rule’s newness.
This is all to say that there would be good reason to conclude that in section 2255 cases, divergent past opinions of “reasonable” jurists should not be enough to demonstrate that a rule is new.5 This approach would not undermine the central premise of Teague’s general rule against retroactivity. Rather than hanging onto the now-vacated opinions of reasonable jurists, I would focus primarily on the straightforward question of whether the new decision “simply applie[s] a well-established constitutional principle to govern a case which is closely analogous to those which have been previously considered in the prior case law.” Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U.S. 302, 314, 109 S.Ct. 2934, 106 L.Ed.2d 256 (1989) (quoting Mackey v. United States, 401 U.S. 667, 695, 91 S.Ct. 1160, 28 L.Ed.2d 404 (1971) (Harlan, J„ concurring in part and dissenting in part)). To the extent there is a need to articulate what my “íederü-Teague ” or “Teague-*345light” standard would be, this language from Penry would encapsulate it precisely.
II.
This discussion brings me to the question of whether Booker created a new rule. In my mind, there can be little argument that Booker did nothing more than “simply appl[y] a well-established constitutional principle [the rule from Apprendi ] to govern a case which is closely analogous.” The well-established constitutional principle is 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.” Apprendi, 530 U.S. at 490, 120 S.Ct. 2348. The closely analogous question presented in Booker, was, in the Court’s own words, “whether our Appren-di line of cases applies to the sentencing guidelines.”6 543 U.S. at 229, 125 S.Ct. 738.
Justice Stevens’s opinion for the Court in Booker — the portion of the opinion that addressed the constitutionality (but not the remedy) of mandatory application of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines — made explicit that it was a straightforward application of Apprendi to the Sentencing Guidelines, rather than the creation of a new rule: “we reaffirm our holding in Ap-prendi: Any fact (other than a prior conviction) which is necessary to support a sentence exceeding the maximum authorized by the facts established by a plea of guilty or a jury verdict must be admitted by the defendant or proved to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt.” Id. at 244, 125 5.Ct. 738 (emphasis added). I am mindful of the Supreme Court’s warning that “the fact that a court says that its decision is within the ‘logical compass’ of an earlier decision, or indeed that it is ‘controlled’ by a prior decision, is not conclusive for purposes of deciding whether the current decision is a ‘new rule’ under Teague.” Butler, 494 U.S. at 415, 110 S.Ct. 1212. Even so, Booker did not create a new rule because it did not “break new ground.” Teague, 489 U.S. at 301, 109 S.Ct. 1060. Instead of creating some new principle of law, or making an extension of the law that was “controlled” by a prior holding, it simply applied the same legal principles it had articulated in Apprendi and Blakely to a new sentencing scheme: “More important than the language used in our holding in Apprendi are the principles we sought to vindicate. Those principles are unquestionably applicable to the Guidelines.” Booker, 543 U.S. at 238, 125 S.Ct. 738 (emphasis added). Revolutionary as the holding in Booker may have seemed, the true upheaval actually occurred in Appren-di through its resuscitation of the Sixth Amendment jury trial right.
Unlike today’s majority and the Hum-phress Court, I am unconvinced that the dissents in Booker and Blakely were “indicative of the Booker rule’s ‘newness.’ ” Although I tend not to engage in the practice of counting justices, it is apparent from a review of the opinions in these cases and Apprendi that the dispute between justices is over the fundamental premise of Apprendi rather than whether or not it foreordained Booker’s constitutional holding. This observation is based not only on the identities of the individual dissenters, but the legal principles they relied upon in each of the three eases. *346See, e.g., Apprendi, 530 U.S. at 543-544, 120 S.Ct. 2348 (O’Connor, J., dissenting) (“The actual principle underlying the Court’s decision ... would apply not only to schemes like New Jersey’s, under which a factual determination exposes the defendant to a sentence beyond the prescribed statutory maximum, but also to all determinate-sentencing schemes in which the length of a defendant’s sentence within the statutory range turns on specific factual determinations (e.g., the federal Sentencing Guidelines).”); id. at 565, 120 S.Ct. 2348 (Breyer, J., dissenting) (“As Justice O’Connor points out, the majority’s rule creates serious uncertainty about the constitutionality of such statutes and about the constitutionality of the confinement of those punished under them.”); Blakely, 542 U.S. at 323, 324-25, 124 S.Ct. 2531 (O’Connor, J., dissenting) (“It is no answer to say that today’s opinion impacts only Washington’s scheme and not others, such as, for example, the Federal Sentencing Guidelines.... The fact that the Federal Sentencing Guidelines are promulgated by an administrative agency nominally located in the Judicial Branch is irrelevant to the majority’s reasoning. The Guidelines have the force of law, ... and Congress has unfettered control to reject or accept any particular guideline. The structure of the Federal Guidelines likewise does not, as the Government half-heartedly suggests, provide any grounds for distinction.”); id. at 346, 124 S.Ct. 2531 (Breyer, J., dissenting) (“Taken together these three sets of considerations, concerning consequences, concerning history, concerning institutional reliance, leave me where I was in Appren-di, i.e., convinced that the Court is wrong.”); Booker, 543 U.S. at 327, 330, 125 S.Ct. 738 (Breyer, J., dissenting) (“The Chief Justice, Justice O’Connor, Justice Kennedy, and I have previously explained at length why we cannot accept the Court’s constitutional analysis.... The upshot is that the Court’s Sixth Amendment decisions — Apprendi, Blakely, and today’s— deprive Congress and state legislatures of authority that is constitutionally theirs.”); see also id. at 288, 125 S.Ct. 738 (Stevens, J., dissenting in part) (“In reality, the [remedial] majority’s concerns ... are nothing more than an objection to Apprendi itself.”).
Of course, Supreme Court justices have the luxury of being able to vote to overturn the Court’s prior precedent, unlike the rest of us who must fall in line once the magic number of five votes is cast. There is no reason for us to be surprised by the Apprendi dissenters’ continued opposition to the rule from that case, which is justified by both their viewpoints and their jobs. A candid look at the differences of opinion between the Justices in these three eases does not suggest to me, however, anything more than an ongoing dispute over the premise underlying Apprendi. Therefore, I cannot read their divergent viewpoints regarding Apprendi to suggest that it did not command the result in Booker.7
*347In fact, the Apprendi dissenters said at the time of the decision that it would require reversal of the Guidelines, as quoted above. Further, like the Booker constitutional majority eventually held, the Ap-prendi dissenters made clear that any distinctions based on the structure or the source of authority (administrative versus legislative) of the federal guidelines was not a meaningful one.8 For their part, the majority opinions in Apprendi and Blakely only stated that the federal guidelines were not in front of the Court, rendering it impossible to make any judgment with regard to the constitutionality of their application.9 530 U.S. at 497 n. 21, 120 S.Ct. 2848. Five years later, the dissenters’ prediction proved correct, in a remarkably straightforward application of Apprendi to the Sentencing Guidelines. I therefore believe that Booker “simply applied a well-established constitutional principle to govern a case which is closely analogous to those which have been previously considered in the prior case law.” Penry, 492 U.S. at 314, 109 S.Ct. 2934.10
*348III.
It is easy to lose sight of, but essential to bear in mind, what the Court meant when it “reaffirmed” its holding from Ap-prendi in Booker, and why and to what extent, for purposes of retroactivity, Booker applied the holding from Apprendi. Booker’s remedial resolution to the Constitutional problems created by mandatory application of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines was delivered in a complicated opinion that continues to cause confusion for the lower federal courts two years after it was decided. Although in my view Booker’s constitutional holding resulted from a straightforward application of Ap-prendi, anyone who could have predicted the case’s remedial holding would have been several steps ahead of the proverbial reasonable jurist, if not a bona fide fortune-teller.11
*349The fact that the remedial holding from Booker was not entirely predictable, however, does not diminish the significance of the dictated-by-prior-precedent Constitutional holding. The invalidation of sentences imposed under a mandatory application of the guidelines is enough to justify retroactivity analysis on its own, aside from the predictability of the remedy that was chosen to fix the Constitutional violation. Further, while the remedy preferred by the dissenters from Booker’s remedial holding would appear to have had a more significant effect on the actual length of sentences, the remedial holding still carries profound implications regarding both the length of sentences and the methods by which they are imposed. The opinion’s remedial holding might mathematically reduce the disparity between the duration of an unconstitutional sentence under the mandatory guidelines and that of an acceptable post-Booker sentence that treats the guidelines as advisory.12 See Booker, 543 U.S. at 302, 125 S.Ct. 738 (Stevens, J., dissenting in part) (“[T]he Court [in Remedial Booker] has effectively eliminated the very constitutional right Apprendi sought to vindicate.”). The positions of the petitioners in the instant case illustrates, however, how a defendant sentenced under the post-Booker advisory guidelines regime still stands to serve a shorter sentence, rendering the question of Booker's retroactive application something more than a purely academic exercise.
Each petitioner was sentenced under the pre-Booker mandatory Guidelines scheme. For each, therefore, the maximum sentence authorized by the facts established by the jury verdict was set by the range required by the Sentencing Guidelines.13 See, e.g., United States v. Blood, 435 F.3d 612, 630 (6th Cir.2006); United States v. Oliver, 397 F.3d 369, 378 (6th Cir.2005) (“Given that the federal sentencing guidelines were mandatory at the time the district court sentenced Oliver, it seems clear now in light of Booker that the *350sentence imposed violated the Sixth Amendment.”); United States v. Davis, 397 F.3d 340, 351 (6th Cir.2005). It is undisputed that the 292 month sentences that both petitioners received were predicated on the district judge finding, based on a preponderance of the evidence, that 1.5 kilograms of crack cocaine could be attributed to each. The drug amount calculation made by the judge by a preponderance of the evidence resulted in each petitioner going from one extreme of the Guidelines based on the Drug Quantity Table of section 2D1.1 to the other extreme — that is to say they each received the highest possible base offense level based on a quantity of drugs alone of 38. Jimmy Ray Valentine also received a two-point offense level enhancement based on the district judge’s determination that he played an aggravated leadership role in the drug conspiracy, resulting in a total offense level of 40.
Based on the jury verdict alone, which included no finding of an amount of drugs, the highest possible base offense level was 12. See U.S.S.G. § 2D1.1 (c). At this level, Jimmy Ray would have received a 10-16 month sentence (for his criminal history category of I), and Kenneth would have received a 15-21 month sentence (for his criminal history category of III). Instead, in stark contrast, they both received sentences of 292 months.14 This equates to a twenty-four year, four month sentence for each — the difference of time each will spend in prison based on facts that were not found by a jury beyond a reasonable doubt is over twenty-two and a half years.
This is not to suggest that the petitioners have some claim to these specific shorter sentences, because were we to remand for resentencing under remedial Booker, the district court could certainly give a sentence within the same guideline range based on judge-found facts, so long as the guidelines range was applied in an advisory fashion. In Jimmy Ray’s case, however, the district court would not be able to impose a sentence over 240 months at his hypothetical resentencing, as that is the statutory maximum for his offense. See Duckro, 466 F.3d at 443 (“[I]n cases where sentencing occurred post -Booker, with the sentencing guidelines applying in only an advisory fashion, the maximum sentence authorized by the facts established through a guilty plea is the ‘maximum sentence prescribed by the applicable statutory provision.’ ”). That is to say that Jimmy Ray would stand to have more than four years reduced from his sentence under Booker and Apprendi. Although Kenneth’s sentence would not be similarly limited, as his prior drug conviction raises the statutory maximum to thirty years, the district court could have also, of course, chosen to sentence below the guidelines range of 292 months — a realistic possibility in light of its selection of the very bottom of the then-mandatory guidelines range. The upshot of the complicated effect of the guidelines is that both petitioners would have much to gain from a remand for resentencing under Booker, as they would stand to get sentences that were both shorter and Constitutional. Not only did their sentences violate Booker, but they violated the principle of Apprendi that any fact “necessary to support a sentence exceeding the maximum authorized by the facts established by a plea of guilty or a jury verdict must be admitted by the de*351fendant or proved to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Of perhaps greater importance than any numerical disparities in the lengths of sentences, however, is the less concrete but more profound value of imposing criminal sentences only after ensuring that vital, centuries-old Constitutional guarantees have been met:
“What is overlooked in post-Booker discussions is the fact that, for seventeen years, federal courts had been sentencing offenders unconstitutionally.” (quoting Professor Douglas Berman, Remarks at Harvard Black Letter Law Association (Apr. 4, 2006)). For seventeen years federal courts had been sentencing offenders unconstitutionally. Think about that. The human cost is incalculable — thousands of Americans languish in prison under sentences that today are unconstitutional. The institutional costs are equally enormous — for seventeen years the American jury was disparaged and disregarded in derogation of its constitutional function; a generation of federal trial judges has lost track of certain core values of an independent judiciary because they have been brought up in a sentencing system that strips the words “burden of proof,” “evidence,” and “facts” of genuine meaning; and the vulnerability of our fair and impartial federal trial court system to attack from the political branches of our government has been exposed as never before in our history.
Kandirakis, 441 F.Supp.2d at 283. Stated somewhat differently, the Apprendi line of cases means much more than how long the government can send a defendant to jail— it speaks volumes about how we, as a democratic society, are able to follow the strictures that represent the very backbone of our legal and Constitutional system. See, e.g., Apprendi, 530 U.S. at 466, 120 S.Ct. 2348 (“ ‘To guard against a spirit of oppression and tyranny on the part of rulers,’ and ‘as the great bulwark of [our] civil and political liberties,’ trial by jury has been understood to require that ‘the truth of every accusation, whether preferred in the shape of indictment, information, or appeal, should afterwards be confirmed by the unanimous suffrage of twelve of [the defendant’s] equals and neighbours ....’”) (quoting 2 J. Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States 540-541 (4th ed. 1873) and 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 343 (1769)). Apprendi and its offspring — Blakely and Booker — recognize a critical, constitutionally mandated check on the sentencing process, through the grounding of sentencing determinations in facts that have been proved to the jury beyond a reasonable doubt. Our modern federal judiciary has been reluctant to recognize this Sixth Amendment limitation,15 probably due to the primacy of the mandatory sentencing guidelines that has been ingrained in our approach to sentencing for seventeen years. Although this is an innate and natural way for anyone to think, federal judges included, our personal experience over seventeen years clearly must take a backseat to the fundamental guarantees of the centuries-old Bill of Rights, with the benefit of the Supreme Court’s reinvigoration of these values through Apprendi and its progeny (i.e.Booker).
IV.
Because I do not believe Booker to be a new rule but rather to be a straightfor*352ward application of Apprendi, federal ha-beas petitioners whose convictions became final after Apprendi should be able to benefit from Booker. For this reason, I respectfully dissent from the majority opinion with respect to Part II. B.

. This is not to suggest that the Humphress opinion somehow overreached or was off-base for the analytical approach that it followed. If, as the panel clearly believed, Blakely and Apprendi did not dictate Booker, then it naturally follows that no pre-Appren-di precedent dictated Booker either. This may have been a simple way of reaching its conclusion regarding Booker's retroactive application to a pre-Apprendi conviction. Nevertheless, this portion of its reasoning went beyond the precise question presented to the panel, and does not bind us to follow it.

. Nor is it clear to me why the majority suggests that Lang v. United States, 474 F.3d 348, 353 (6th Cir.2007), "could be read to foreclose" the “issue as argued by the Valentines here.” Maj. Op. at 330. As the majority acknowledges, Lang in no way addressed whether Booker was dictated by Apprendi, apparently because the petitioner in Lang did not raise this argument. The majority's suggestion that Lang is somehow controlling would allow precedential decisional law to be created on a given issue where a losing party fails to raise that issue, simply because the facts or procedural posture of his case would theoretically have allowed him to raise it. Essentially, by failing to raise the argument and losing his case on other grounds, the Lang petitioner would not only waive the unli-tigated claim in his own case, but would close the door on that claim on behalf of all other, similarly situated habeas petitioners. This is a legal principle with which I, at least, am unfamiliar.

. Other Courts of Appeals have concluded that Teague applies to section 2255 petitions, and have not acknowledged any difference between the analysis for habeas petitions seeking relief from federal convictions versus those seeking relief from state convictions. See Daniels v. United States, 254 F.3d 1180, 1194 (10th Cir.2001); United States v. Martinez, 139 F.3d 412, 416 (4th Cir.1998); Van Daalwyk v. United States, 21 F.3d 179, 183 (7th Cir.1994); Gilberti v. United States, 917 F.2d 92, 95 (2d Cir.1990). As Justice Brennan pointed out in his dissent in Teague, however, the Court’s opinion had nothing to do with section 2255 petitions. 489 U.S. at 328, 109 S.Ct. 1060 (Brennan, J., dissenting); see also United States v. Payne, 894 F.Supp. 534, 542 (D.Mass.1995) (ruling that Teague does not apply in section 2255 cases.). I would not take issue with the general conclusion reached by other courts that Teague is relevant to the retroactivity inquiry in habeas petitions brought by federal prisoners; rather, as discussed below, I think that its application should be somewhat different in this context.

. Moss refers to the standard by which our Court of Appeals reviews a district court's disposition of a section 2255 petition, rather than how the district court reviews the prior, direct proceedings in the underlying criminal case. But the fact that the district court in which the petition is filed is usually the same court that originally handled the case, and has the opportunity to correct any errors it may have made, without showing any sort of awkward deference to its own earlier decision, indicates even less concern with deference in the first instance. See Weinberger v. United States, 268 F.3d 346, 351 (6th Cir.2001) (“A motion brought under § 2255 must allege one of three bases as a threshold standard: (1) an error of constitutional magnitude; (2) a sentence imposed outside the statutory limits; or (3) an error of fact or law that was so fundamental as to render the entire proceeding invalid.”). Further, some claims, such as those for ineffective assistance of counsel, can only be heard in the first instance in a petition for habeas relief under section 2255, see United States v. Aguwa, 123 F.3d 418, 423 (6th Cir.1997), providing addi*344tional support for the view of such a petition as part of the ongoing adjudication of a federal criminal case, rather than some separate, isolated proceeding, the conclusions of which are entitled to some sort of deference.
Another judge who has questioned Teague s applicability in federal habeas cases has suggested that concerns of both comity and finality are diminished in section 2255 cases, in light of the fact that to a large extent, they are a continuation of the original federal criminal proceeding, rather than a purely separate and distinct lawsuit:
To this Court, the difference in the nature of proceedings under sections 2254 and 2255 precludes application of Teague to federal prisoners, at least in the present circumstances:
In contrast to the "civil” and "collateral” section 2254 remedy for state prisoners, the section 2255 remedy for federal prisoners bears the markings of an integral part of a continuous criminal proceeding that is segmented by no event or condition decisive of finality. This characteristic of section 2255 proceedings creates the possibility, ignored by most courts and commentators that have faced the issue, that Teague does not apply in section 2255 proceedings....
The legislative history of section 2255 supports the view that 2255 actions are part of the criminal proceedings and that the conviction or sentence is not "final” until disposition of the habeas petition.
Payne, 894 F.Supp. at 543 (quoting James S. Liebman & Randy Hertz, Federal Habeas Corpus Practice and Procedure § 22A.6, at 272-74 (Michie Supp.1993), and Rules Governing Section 2255 Proceedings in the United States District Courts, 1 Advisory Committee Note (1976 Adoption) (2255 motion "is a further step in the movant’s criminal case and not a separate civil action”)).

. This view might seem somewhat novel among federal judges, but I would note that at least one commentator has made similar observations pertaining to "Teague-light" in federal habeas petitions:
[U]nlike motions filed under the state habe-as statute, which are governed by 2254, 2255 motions are filed in the federal district court that originally imposed the sentence. Consequently, the great fear in Teague that retroactivity would upset federal-state relations by interfering with the finality of state court judgments and unduly burdening state court systems with rehearings is simply not present with 2255 motions. As recently as 2004, the Court acknowledged that the justification for the Teague ban hinged on the fact that Teague involved state habeas petitioners, [citing Beard ] ... In the wake of Blakely and Booker, however, lower federal courts and commentators seem oblivious to the difference between state and federal habeas challenges and why each might fare differently under the principles of Teague.
Nicholas J. Eichenseer, Comment, Reasonable Doubt in the Rear-View Mirror: The Case for Blakely-Booker Retroactivity in the Federal System, 2005 Wis. L.Rev. 1137, 1167 (2005).

. The Court explained the issue somewhat more thoroughly by quoting the first question presented: ''[w]hether the Sixth Amendment is violated by the imposition of an enhanced sentence under the United States Sentencing Guidelines based on the sentencing judge’s determination of a fact (other than a prior conviction) that was not found by the jury or admitted by the defendant.” 543 U.S. at 229 n. 1, 125 S.Ct. 738.

. There are many areas of the law where particular Supreme Court justices have continued to argue against a certain legal rule even after it is established as precedential authority. As an example, for fourteen years after the Court declared in Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 169, 96 S.Ct. 2909, 49 L.Ed.2d 859 (1976) that “the punishment of death does not invariably violate the Constitution,” Justices Brennan and Marshall adhered to their dissenting opinions from Gregg that the death penalty always violates the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. See, e.g., Walton v. Arizona, 497 U.S. 639, 674-75, 110 S.Ct. 3047, 111 L.Ed.2d 511 (1990) (Brennan, J., with whom Marshall J., joins, dissenting) ("I also adhere to my view that the death penalty is in all circumstances a cruel and unusual punishment.”) (citing Gregg, 428 U.S. at 230-31, 96 S.Ct. 2971 (Brennan, J., dissenting)). In fact, a Lexis-Nexis search for "Dissent by (Brennan) and Dissent by (Marshall) and *347death penalty” yields 1440 cases since 1976, the vast majority of which appear to contain the oft recited phrase "[ajdhering to our views that the death penalty is in all circumstances cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments....” See, e.g., Boggs v. Muncy, 497 U.S. 1043, 111 S.Ct. 2, 111 L.Ed.2d 818 (1990). Well placed as their arguments may have been, it would be an uphill battle to point to this entrenched resistance by these two esteemed justices as diminishing the precedential significance of Gregg, or as indicating that the death sentences of subsequent litigants were somehow less controlled by the Court’s prior death penalty jurisprudence.
See also Gonzales v. Carhart, - U.S. -, 127 S.Ct. 1610, 167 L.Ed.2d 480 (2007) (Thomas, J., joined by Scalia, J., concurring) (“I write separately to reiterate my view that the Court's abortion jurisprudence, including [Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v.] Casey [505 U.S. 833, 112 S.Ct. 2791, 120 L.Ed.2d 674 (1992)] and Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 93 S.Ct. 705, 35 L.Ed.2d 147 (1973), has no basis in the Constitution.”).

. It seems that the United States had accepted this reality as well after Apprendi, or at least by the time Blakely was argued in the Supreme Court. See Blakely, 542 U.S. at 305 n. 9, 124 S.Ct. 2531 ("The United States, as amicus curiae, urges us to affirm. It notes differences between Washington's sentencing regime and the Federal Sentencing Guidelines but questions whether those differences are constitutionally significant.”).

. As the majority points out, other federal courts have pointed to the Supreme Court's "reserving judgment” on the constitutionality of the guidelines in Apprendi and Blakely in support of their determination that Booker created a new rule. See, e.g., McReynolds v. United States, 397 F.3d 479, 481 (7th Cir. 2005). In my mind, these statements about reserving judgment have nothing to do with the newness inquiry. It is a fundamental principle of the judicial process that courts can only consider one case at a time, see Griffith v. Kentucky, 479 U.S. 314, 323, 107 S.Ct. 708, 93 L.Ed.2d 649 (1987), and the Supreme Court’s refusal to reach past the case presented to it has little to do with whether the opinion in one case dictates the result in a subsequent case. The Seventh Circuit's reasoning in McReynolds’s would essentially mean that every Supreme Court decision announces a “new rule,” except in the unlikely scenario where the Court grants cer-tiorari to hear a case presenting an issue identical to one it has already decided and then decides it in an identical fashion.

.Although the focus of my dissent is that Booker should apply retroactively to convictions that became final after Apprendi because it did not create a new rule, a strong argument can also be made that Booker fits into one of the exceptions to Teague’s general prohibition of the retroactive application of new rules. See David E. Johnson, Note, Justice for All: Analyzing Blakely Retroactivity and Ensuring Just Sentences in Pre-Blakely Sentences, 66 Ohio St. LJ. 875, 908-22 (2005). Specifically, where a new rule is deemed a "watershed rule[ ] of criminal procedure implicating the fundamental fairness and accuracy of the criminal proceeding,” it still can apply retroactively. Beard, 542 U.S. at 417, 124 S.Ct. 2504 (quoting O’Dell v. Netherland, 521 U.S. *348151, 157, 117 S.Ct. 1969, 138 L.Ed.2d 351, (1997)). The command from Apprendi, Blakely, and Booker that facts necessary to support a sentence beyond the maximum authorized by a conviction "must be admitted by the defendant or proved to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt," would clearly appear to amount to a rule implicating fundamental fairness and accuracy.
The Supreme Court has partially rejected this argument, holding that assignment of the factfinding role to a jury, rather than a judge, does not necessarily increase the accuracy of a criminal proceeding. Schriro v. Summerlin, 542 U.S. 348, 356, 124 S.Ct. 2519, 159 L.Ed.2d 442 (2004) ("[F]or every argument why juries are more accurate factfinders, there is another why they are less accurate.”). In holding that Booker was a new rule, our Circuit's Humphress opinion relied on Schri-ro’ s conclusion that a jury does not necessarily make more accurate factual determinations than a judge. Schriro, however, did not analyze the separate but related requirement of Apprendi that facts necessary to the sentence must be found beyond a reasonable doubt. See Johnson, 66 Ohio St. LJ. at 915. Hum-phress did not account for the increased standard of proof required by Apprendi. Raising the standard of proof from the pre-Booker preponderance of the evidence to the Appren-di-mandated beyond a reasonable doubt must clearly have a profound effect on the accuracy of sentencing procedures. Id. at 915-22; see also In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358, 363, 90 S.Ct. 1068, 25 L.Ed.2d 368 (1970) ("The reasonable-doubt standard ... is a prime instrument for reducing the risk of convictions resting on factual error.”).

. In a particularly thorough opinion, United States District Judge William Young of the District of Massachusetts has set forth an insightful historical account of the developments leading up to the Booker decision, and how he has implemented the requirements of Apprendi, Blakely, and Booker in his court. United States v. Kandirakis, 441 F.Supp.2d 282 (D.Mass.2006). Judge Young anticipated the Constitutional problems with the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, and ruled them unconstitutional prior to the Supreme Court's decision in Blakely. Id. (citing United States v. Green, 346 F.Supp.2d 259 (D.Mass.2004)). As a result, prior to the Booker decision, he implemented a sentencing scheme that he referred to as "Blakely-izing” the Guidelines by requiring the government to prove to the jury beyond a reasonable doubt any sentencing enhancements that it would seek, a process that as he explained "reflected the preferred remedy of the dissenting Justices in Remedial Booker." Id. at 318-19, 109 S.Ct. 2934.
Although, as Judge Young notes, "[t]he consequences of Apprendi for the Federal Sentencing Guidelines were immediately apparent,” id. at 287, 125 S.Ct. 738, his opinion makes clear that these consequences primarily played out in Booker s Constitutional holding. As for Booker's remedial opinion, which Judge Young described learning of with the following humorous anecdote, he was left rather puzzled:
I well remember the advent of Booker. We were trying a jury case. The law clerks, recognizing my continuing interest in these matters, e-mailed the decision to my courtroom deputy clerk, Elizabeth Smith, in the courtroom. She began printing out the decision. The courtroom printer is notoriously slow. As the first page came out of the printer, she slapped on a "Post-It” note and, grinning, passed it up to me. On the note was a little smiley face and the words "You’ll love this!” Page by page, Justice Stevens's majority opinion was passed up to me until it was fully assembled.
*349The printer kept on humming.
Ms. Smith stopped passing the pages in order to scan for herself what turned out to be Remedial Booker. After three or four pages had printed out, she applied another “Post-It” and, crestfallen, passed them up. The second note read, “How can there be two different majority opinions in the same case?” How indeed?
Id. at 319, 109 S.Ct. 2934.

. It also does not require profound statistical analysis to understand that the presumption of reasonableness afforded a within-guidelines sentence by the Courts of Appeals, including ours, has tended to diminish any meaningful difference in sentence length between pre-Booker sentences under the mandatory guidelines and post-Booker sentences. Douglas A. Berman, Reasoning through Reasonableness, 115 Yale L.J. Pocket Part 142, 143 (July/Aug.2006) (“Post-Booker circuit doctrines and practices encourage the sort of rote, mechanistic reliance on the Guidelines that Justice Stevens's merits opinion found constitutionally problematic.”). When con-suited, the statistics paint an even starker picture than an observer might have hypothesized. Essentially, the presumption of reasonableness has functioned to vitiate both holdings of Booker by placing non-subtle pressure on district courts to institute a within-guidelines sentence so as to avoid reversal. See Brief for New York Counsel of Defense Lawyers as Amicus Curiae, Rita v. United States, No. 06-5754 (U.S. Dec. 18, 2006) (surveying appellate decisions regarding sentencing appeals and concluding that of 1,152 within-guidelines sentences appealed by defendants, only 16 were reversed, while 60 of 71 below-guidelines sentences appealed by the government have been reversed, yet only 7 of 154 above-guidelines sentences appealed by defendants have been reversed).

. This analysis would be different had they been sentenced under the post-Booker, advisory Guidelines regime, as the statutory maximum sentence for the crime of which they were convicted, not the Guidelines range, would set the ceiling. See United States v. Duckro, 466 F.3d 438, 443 (6th Cir.2006).

. The judge's finding that Jimmy Ray had an aggravating role in the conspiracy and the resulting two point enhancement gave him an offense level of 40 with a criminal history category of I, which amounted to the functional equivalent of Kenneth's offense level of 38 with a criminal history of III. Each calculation led to a guideline range of 292-365 months, and the district judge gave both the minimum sentence allowed.

. See, e.g., Koch, 383 F.3d at 438 ("[W]e conclude that Blakely does not require us to invalidate the Guidelines.”).