Court Opinion

ID: 9429913
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:28:16.24317+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:22.093771
License: Public Domain

Justice White,
with whom The Chief Justice, Justice Rehnquist, and Justice O’Connor join,
dissenting.
Last Term, in Solem v. Stumes, 465 U. S. 638 (1984), we held that the rule announced by the Court in Edwards v. Arizona, 451 U. S. 477 (1981), should not be applied retroactively in collateral attacks on criminal convictions. We concluded that the prophylactic purpose of the Edwards rule, the justifiable failure of police and prosecutors to foresee the Court’s decision in Edwards, and the substantial disruption of the criminal justice system that retroactive application of Edwards would entail all indicated the wisdom of holding Edwards nonretroactive. Today, however, the majority concludes that notwithstanding the substantial reasons for restricting the application of Edwards to cases involving interrogations that postdate the Court’s opinion in Edwards, the Edwards rule must be applied retroactively to all cases in which the process of direct appeal had not yet been completed when Edwards was decided. In so holding, the majority apparently adopts a rule long advocated by a shifting minority of Justices and endorsed in limited circumstances by the majority in United States v. Johnson, 457 U. S. 537 (1982): namely, the rule that any new constitutional decision — except, perhaps, one that constitutes a “clear break with the past” — must be applied to all cases pending on direct appeal at the time it is handed down.
*62Two concerns purportedly underlie the majority’s decision. The first is that retroactivity is somehow an essential attribute of judicial decisionmaking, and that when the Court announces a new rule and declines to give it retroactive effect, it has abandoned the judicial role and assumed the function of a legislature — or, to use the term Justice Harlan employed in describing the problem, a “super-legislature.” Desist v. United States, 394 U. S. 244, 259 (1969) (Harlan, J., dissenting). The second (and not completely unrelated) concern is fairness. It is the business of a court, the majority reasons, to treat like cases alike; accordingly, it is unfair for one litigant to receive the benefit of a new decision when another, identically situated, is denied the same benefit. The majority’s concerns are no doubt laudable, but I cannot escape the conclusion that the rule they have spawned makes no sense.
As a means of avoiding what has come to be known as the super-legislature problem, the rule announced by the majority is wholly inadequate. True, the Court is not and cannot be a legislature, super or otherwise. But I should think that concerns about the supposed usurpation of legislative authority by this Court generally go more to the substance of the Court’s decisions than to whether or not they are retroactive. Surely those who believe that the Court has overstepped the bounds of its legitimate authority in announcing a new rule of constitutional law will find little solace in a decision holding the new rule retroactive. If a decision is in some sense illegitimate, making it retroactive is a useless gesture that will fool no one. If, on the other hand, the decision is a salutary one, but one whose purposes are ill-served by retroactive application, retroactivity may be worse than useless, imposing costs on the criminal justice system that will likely be uncompensated for by any perceptible gains in “judicial legitimacy.”
The futility of this latest attempt to use retroactivity doctrine to avoid the super-legislature difficulty is highlighted by *63the majority’s unwillingness to commit itself to the logic of its position. For even as it maintains that retroactivity is essential to the judicial function, today’s majority, like the majority in Johnson, supra, continues to hold out the possibility that a “really” new rule — one that marks a clear break with the past — may not have to be applied retroactively even to cases pending on direct review at the time the new decision is handed down. See ante, at 57 and 59, n. 5; Johnson, supra, at 549-550, 551-554. Of course, if the majority were truly concerned with the super-legislature problem, it would be “clear break” decisions that would trouble it the most. Indeed, one might expect that a Court as disturbed about the problem as the majority purports to be would swear off such decisions altogether, not reserve the power both to issue them and to decline to apply them retroactively. In leaving open the possibility of an exception for “clear break” decisions, the majority demonstrates the emptiness of its proposed solution to the super-legislature problem.
The claim that the majority’s rule serves the interest of fairness is equally hollow. Although the majority finds it intolerable to apply a new rule to one case on direct appeal but not to another, it is perfectly willing to tolerate disparate treatment of defendants seeking direct review of their convictions and prisoners attacking their convictions in collateral proceedings. As I have stated before, see Johnson, supra, at 566-568 (White, J., dissenting); Williams v. United States, 401 U. S. 646, 656-659 (1971) (plurality opinion), it seems to me that the attempt to distinguish between direct and collateral challenges for purposes of retroactivity is misguided. Under the majority’s rule, otherwise identically situated defendants may be subject to different constitutional rules, depending on just how long ago now-unconstitutional conduct occurred and how quickly cases proceed through the criminal justice system. The disparity is no different in kind from that which occurs when the benefit of a new constitutional rule is retroactively afforded to the defendant in whose *64case it is announced but to no others; the Court’s new approach equalizes nothing except the numbers of defendants within the disparately treated classes.
The majority recognizes that the distinction between direct review and habeas is problematic, but justifies its differential treatment by appealing to the need to draw “the curtain of finality,” ante, at 60, on those who were unfortunate enough to have exhausted their last direct appeal at the time Edwards was decided. Yet the majority offers no reasons for its conclusion that finality should be the decisive factor. When a conviction is overturned on direct appeal on the basis of an Edwards violation, the remedy offered the defendant is a new trial at which any inculpatory statements obtained in violation of Edwards will be excluded. It is not clear to me why the majority finds such a burdensome remedy more acceptable when it is imposed on the State on direct review than when it is the result of a collateral attack. The disruption attendant upon the remedy does not vary depending on whether it is imposed on direct review or habeas;1 accord*65ingly, if the remedy must be granted to defendants on direct appeal, there is no strong reason to deny it to prisoners attacking their convictions collaterally. Conversely, if it serves no worthwhile purpose to grant the remedy to a defendant whose conviction was final before Edwards, it is hard to see why the remedy should be available on direct review.
The underlying flaw of the majority’s opinion is its failure to articulate the premises on which the retroactivity doctrine it announces actually rests. In recognizing that a decision marking a clear break from the past may not be retroactive and in holding that the concern of finality trumps considerations of fairness that might otherwise dictate retroactivity in collateral proceedings, the majority implicitly recognizes that there is in fact more at issue in decisions involving retro-activity than treating like cases alike. In short, the majority recognizes that there are reasons why certain decisions ought not be retroactive. But the rules the majority announces fail to reflect any thoughtful inquiry into what those reasons might be. By contrast, the principles of retroactivity set forth in Linkletter v. Walker, 381 U. S. 618 (1965), and most recently applied in Solem v. Stumes, 465 U. S. 638 (1984), provide a rational framework for thinking about the question whether retroactive application of any particular decision makes sense — that is, whether the benefits of retroactivity outweigh its costs. Because the Court has already deter*66mined that the relevant considerations set forth in Linkletter (the purpose of the new rule, the extent of law enforcement officials’ justifiable reliance on the prior rule, and the effects on the criminal justice system of retroactivity) dictate non-retroactive application of the rule in Edwards, I cannot join in the majority’s conclusion that that rule should be applied retroactively to cases pending on direct review at the time of our decision in Edwards. More importantly, I cannot concur in the approach to retroactivity adopted by today’s majority — an approach that, if our precedents regarding the non-retroactivity of decisions marking a clear break with the past remain undisturbed, merely adds a confusing and unjustifiable addendum to our retroactivity jurisprudence.2
I respectfully dissent.

 The distinction between direct review and collateral attack may bear some relationship to the recency of the crime; thus, to the extent that the difficulties presented by a new trial may be more severe when the underlying offense is more remote in time, it may be that new trials would tend to be somewhat more burdensome in habeas cases than in cases involving reversals on direct appeal. However, this relationship is by no means direct, for the speed with which cases progress through the criminal justice system may vary widely. Thus, if the Court is truly concerned with treating like cases alike, it could accomplish its purpose far more precisely by applying new constitutional rules only to conduct of appropriately recent vintage. I assume, however, that no one would argue for an explicit “5-year rule,” for example.
' The notion that a new trial is a significantly less burdensome remedy when it is imposed on direct review than when it is ordered on habeas is also called into serious question by the facts of this particular case. The remedy the Court grants the petitioner is a new trial that will be held almost six years after the commission of the offense with which he is charged. I have no doubt that there are many prisoners whose convic*65tions were final at the time Edwards was decided who could be given a new trial as conveniently as petitioner.
Of course, it will be less burdensome in the aggregate to apply Edwards only to cases pending when Edwards was decided than to give it full retroactive effect; by the same token, it would be less burdensome to apply Edwards retroactively to all cases involving defendants whose last names begin with the letter “S” than to make the decision fully retroactive. The majority obviously would not countenance the latter course, but its failure to identify any truly relevant distinction between cases on direct appeal and eases raising collateral challenges makes the rule it announces equally indefensible.

 After today, a decision that is foreshadowed — not new at all — is applicable both on direct review and in collateral proceedings. A decision that makes law that is somewhat new is to apply to all cases on direct review but will generally not be a basis for collateral relief. Really new decisions breaking with the past, however, will likely apply neither in collateral proceedings nor to cases on direct review other than that in which the decision is announced. The majority thus recognizes for purposes of retroactivity doctrine three categories of decisions: not new, newish, and brand new. I had hoped that after plenary review, we could do better than that.