Court Opinion

ID: 9499399
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:47:42.149963+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:59:29.160663
License: Public Domain

REEVES, District Judge,
dissenting.
The majority finds that the rule announced in Halbert applies retroactively to Simmons’ case because it is not a “new rule” under the Teague analysis. Respectfully, I cannot agree with this conclusion. Reasonable jurists differed over whether the issue presented in Halbert was con*880trolled by Douglas or Ross, and Halbert announced a “new rule” that was not dictated, by existing precedent. Every panel that addressed the issue, including the United States Supreme Court, the Michigan Supreme Court, and an en banc panel of this Court, resulted in a divided decision. Further, it cannot be said that the Michigan Supreme Court’s decision to follow Ross was unreasonable. Accordingly, Halbert announced a new rule that should not apply retroactively to Simmons’ case unless it fits into one. of the Teague exceptions. And because the Supreme Court’s “new rule” requiring that defendants receive appointed counsel in discretionary appeals from a plea-based conviction does not rise to the requisite level of implicating “fundamental fairness at trial”, it does not fit into the only exception that might be applicable here.
I. Halbert announced a “new rule” that was not dictated by Douglas.
As the majority notes, it is not in dispute that Simmons’ conviction was final at the time of the Halbert decision. When a state court judgment is final, “Teague’s nonretroactivity principle acts as a limitation on the power of federal courts to grant ‘habeas relief to ... state prisoner[s].’ ” Beard v. Banks, 542 U.S. 406, 412, 124 S.Ct. 2504, 159 L.Ed.2d 494 (2004) (citing Caspari v. Bohlen, 510 U.S. 383, 389, 114 S.Ct. 948, 127 L.Ed.2d 236 (1994)) (alteration in original). According to the Supreme Court, “[tjhis 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.” Id. at 413, 124 S.Ct. 2504. “The ‘new rule’ principle therefore validates reasonable, good-faith interpretations of existing precedents made by state courts even though they are shown to be contrary to later decisions.” Butler v. McKellar, 494 U.S. 407, 414, 110 S.Ct. 1212, 108 L.Ed.2d 347 (1990).
Under Teague, a court must “survey the legal landscape as of that date” and determine if the rule announced “was dictated by then-existing precedent — whether, that is, the unlawfulness of [the] conviction was apparent to all reasonable jurists.” Lambrix v. Singletary, 520 U.S. 518, 527-28, 117 S.Ct. 1517, 137 L.Ed.2d 771 (1997) (emphasis in original). For a rule of criminal procedure to apply retroactively, the Teague inquiry requires more than a showing that the rule announced is the most reasonable application of prior law, rather it requires that “no other interpretation was reasonable.” Lambrix, 520 U.S. at 538, 117 S.Ct. 1517 (emphasis in original).
Here, the Michigan Supreme Court’s holding that a defendant was not entitled to appointed counsel in a discretionary appeal from a plea-based conviction was a reasonable interpretation of Douglas and Ross and its progeny. The holding in Douglas had been consistently limited to first appeals as of right, and the Supreme Court never required the appointment of counsel for discretionary review until Halbert. Halbert v. Michigan, 545 U.S. 605, 125 S.Ct. 2582, 2597, 162 L.Ed.2d 552 (2005) (Thomas, J. dissenting). As this Court noted when it first addressed the issue in Tesmer v. Granholm, 333 F.3d 683 (6th Cir.2003) (en banc), rev’d, Kowalski v. Tesmer, 543 U.S. 125, 125 S.Ct. 564, 160 L.Ed.2d 519 (2004), “the [Supreme] Court has ruled on first appeals as of right and second, discretionary appeals, but not the discretionary first appeal at issue here.” Tesmer, 333 F.3d at 696. Additionally, neither Douglas nor Ross addressed the issue of appeals from plea-based convictions. Reasonable jurists differed over whether Michigan’s system was controlled by Ross or Douglas, and the holding in *881Halbert expressly addressed the question: “With which of those decisions should the instant case be aligned?” Halbert, 125 S.Ct. at 2590. Moreover, the Supreme Court’s statements that the case “is properly ranked with Douglas rather than Ross” and “Douglas provides the controlling instruction” do not rise to the level of “dictating” the result as required by Teague. Halbert, 125 S.Ct. at 2586, 2590; Teague, 489 U.S. at 301, 109 S.Ct. 1060. Thus, although the Michigan Supreme Court’s decision upholding the Michigan system of appellate counsel arguably may not have been the most reasonable decision in light of the Supreme Court’s holding in Halbert, reasonable jurists differed and the rule announced in Halbert should not be applied retroactively to Simmons’ case.
The majority rests its finding that Hal-bert did not announce a new rule on the fact that the Michigan system involved first level appellate review and “error correction.” According to the majority, “[b]e-cause the Michigan Court of Appeals acts to correct errors, even if it first exercises its discretion in deciding which potential errors to address, the result in Halbert is really an application of the ‘old rule’ from Douglas. ” However, such reasoning oversimplifies the application of Douglas to the Michigan system of appeals. Prior to its decision in Halbert, the Supreme Court had never extended Douglas to require the appointment of counsel for a discretionary appeal. Halbert, 125 S.Ct. at 2597 (Thomas, J., dissenting). When this Court first addressed the constitutionality of the Michigan system in the 2003 case of Tesmer v. Granholm, it noted that:
The judge-appellants are correct in stating that the Supreme Court has never held that a constitutional right to appointed counsel exists on all first appeals. The Court has yet to address the situation the statute presents, that of a discretionary first appeal. In addressing the issue of the right to appointed appellate counsel, the Court has ruled on first appeals as of right and second, discretionary appeals, but not the discretionary first appeal at issue here. We are left to fill in this gap.
Tesmer, 333 F.3d at 696. The dichotomy of the relevant Supreme Court precedents is further explained by Justice Thomas in his dissent in Halbert, which states that:
Michigan’s system bears some similarity to the state systems at issue in both Douglas and Ross. Like the defendant in Douglas, Halbert requests appointed counsel for an initial appeal before an intermediate appellate court. But like the defendant in Ross, Halbert requests appointed counsel for an appeal that is discretionary, not as of right. Crucially, however, Douglas noted that its decision extended only to initial appeals as of right — and later cases have repeatedly reaffirmed that understanding. This Court has never required States to appoint counsel for discretionary review.
Halbert, 125 S.Ct. at 2597 (Thomas, J., dissenting).1
*882Significantly, the Michigan system not only presented the novel issue of a first level discretionary appeal, but also only applied to plea-based convictions. Under the Michigan constitution, a defendant who pleas guilty or nolo contendere “relinquishes access to an appeal as of right,” and must file an application for leave to appeal, regardless of whether the defendant can afford counsel. Halbert, 125 S.Ct. at 2590; Mich. Const, art. 1 § 20. If the court of appeals grants review, or any other statutory exceptions apply, Michigan law requires the appointment of appellate counsel. Mich. Comp. Laws Ann. § 770.3a. Otherwise, a defendant appealing from a plea-based conviction was not entitled to appointed counsel in his application for leave to appeal. Id.
In applying Douglas, Ross, and the cases that followed, this Court in Tesmer noted that “[w]e cannot read into this discussion any mandate from the [Supreme] Court for states to provide appellate counsel in every instance. What we can take from the discussion is that appellate processes must be fair and may not be implemented in a manner that discriminates based on indigency.” Tesmer, 333 F.3d at 700. In Ross, the Supreme Court held that a state does not have to provide an appeal at all, but when it does, it must do so in a non-discriminatory manner. That is, defendants must be afforded “meaningful access to the appellate system.” Ross v. Moffitt, 417 U.S. 600, 611, 94 S.Ct. 2437, 41 L.Ed.2d 341 (1974). Following this rationale, the Michigan Supreme Court reasonably found that “[g]iven the obvious differences between trial-based and guilty plea convictions, it is clear that our current guilty plea procedures provide sufficient methods of assistance to meet the Ross meaningful access requirement.” People v. Bulger, 462 Mich. 495, 518, 614 N.W.2d 103 (Mich.2000). The state supreme court reasoned that guilty pleas were sufficiently different from convictions after trials because of (1) the state’s interest in finality, (2) the “shorter, simpler, and more routine” nature of the plea proceedings which lead to a clear trial record from which the appellate court can decide whether to permit review, and (3) the limitation on issues for review when a defendant pleas guilty. Bulger, 462 Mich, at 516-17, 614 N.W.2d 103. The dissent in Halbert agreed with the Michigan Supreme Court’s reasonable interpretation of constitutional requirements and precedent and found that Douglas “does not support extending the right to counsel to any form of discretionary review, as Ross v. Moffitt, 417 U.S. 600, 94 S.Ct. 2437, 41 L.Ed.2d 341 (1974), and later cases maker clear.” Halbert, 125 S.Ct. at 2596 (Thomas, J., dissenting). According to Justice Thomas, “Michigan has done no more than recognize the undeniable difference between defendants who plead guilty and those who maintain their innocence, in an attempt to divert resources from largely frivolous appeals to more meritorious ones.” Id.
The majority also points to the Supreme Court’s statement in Halbert that “Douglas provides the controlling instruction” in support of its holding that Halbert did not announce a new rule. Halbert, 125 S.Ct. at 2590. Contrary to this contention, the Supreme Court has held that such statements do not indicate that the state court acted unreasonably;
*883But 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. Courts frequently view their decisions as being ‘controlled’ or ‘governed’ by prior opinions even when aware of reasonable contrary conclusions reached by other courts.
Butler, 494 U.S. at 415, 110 S.Ct. 1212. The language used by the Supreme Court, such as “controlling instruction,” “classification question,” and “Halbert’s case is properly ranked with Douglas rather than Ross ” does not rise to the level of dictating the result as required by Teague. The Michigan Supreme Court reached a “reasonable contrary conclusion” regarding the application of Douglas and Ross to the Michigan system, and the holding in Hal-bert should be considered a new rule for purposes of the Teague retroactivity analysis.
Moreover, although the Supreme Court has stated that the “mere existence of a dissent” is not sufficient to show that a rule is new “[b]ecause the focus of the inquiry is whether reasonable jurists could differ as to whether precedent compels the sought-for rule,” the Court has relied on dissents in its own decisions for that very premise. Beard v. Banks, 542 U.S. 406, 416 n. 5, 124 S.Ct. 2504, 159 L.Ed.2d 494 (2004) (emphasis in original). In Beard, the Supreme Court addressed the retroac-five application of a rule of criminal procedure under circumstances similar to the present case.2 Id. at 410, 124 S.Ct. 2504. The Court had based its “new rule” on a line of cases similar, but not exactly identical, to the one before the court. Id. Thereafter, the Third Circuit held that the rule applied retroactively and was not barred by Teague, and the Supreme Court reversed. Id. The Supreme Court held that the essential, determining factor was that the prior cases did not mandate the result. Id. at 414, 124 S.Ct. 2504. (“The generalized Lockett rule (that the sentencer must be allowed to consider any mitigating evidence) could be thought to support the Court’s conclusion in Mills and McKoy. But what is essential here is that it does not mandate the Mills rule.”). The Court found that there was a distinguishing factor in the precedential line of cases that was not present in the case announcing the new rule. Id. The Court further relied on the dissent in the case announcing the new rule to show that “there is no need to guess” if reasonable jurists could differ as to whether the precedent compelled the result. Beard, 542 U.S. at 415, 124 S.Ct. 2504.
The present case can be substantially analogized to the Supreme Court’s reasoning in Beard. In Halbert, the Court based its decision on the Douglas line of cases, but Douglas did not mandate the result. Although some of the factors articulated by the Court in Douglas influenced the *884result in Halbert (that is, that the discretionary appeal involved some level of adjudication on the merits and that a defendant seeking leave to appeal is “generally ill equipped to represent themselves” under the Michigan system), Halbert introduced two new factors that were not even considered in Douglas. Halbert, 125 S.Ct. at 2591. First, the Michigan system only applied to defendants appealing from a plea-based conviction. Second, it did not afford such defendants an appeal of right. While the holding in Douglas was limited to requiring appointed counsel on initial appeals as of right, the Court in Halbert “h[e]ld that the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses require the appointment of counsel for defendants, convicted on their pleas, who seek access to first-tier review in the Michigan Court of Appeals.” Halbert, 125 S.Ct. at 2586. As the Supreme Court’s explicit holding makes clear, Halbert addressed factors that were clearly distinguishable from Douglas, and reasonable jurists could and did differ concerning whether Douglas compelled the result in Halbert.
Finally, as in Beard, “there is no need to guess” whether reasonable jurists could differ as to whether Douglas compelled the result in Halbert, as three justices agreed with the Michigan Supreme Court and found that Michigan’s system for appellate counsel was constitutional under Douglas and Ross. Halbert, 125 S.Ct. at 2595 (Thomas, J., dissenting).3 Justice Thomas’ dissenting opinion follows much of the same analysis as the Michigan Supreme Court and disputes the majority’s findings that the discretionary review system is an adjudication on the merits and that a defendant is not sufficiently equipped to apply for leave to appeal. Justice Thomas repeatedly states that “the rationale of Douglas does not support extending the right to counsel to this particular form of discretionary review.” Id. at 2597. The dissent also disagrees with the majority’s finding that the Michigan Court of Appeals adjudicates on the merits, as “the Court of Appeals’ decision to grant review remains ‘discretionary,’ because it does not depend on- ‘whether there has been a correct adjudication of guilt in every individual case.’ Like other courts of discretionary review, the Court of Appeals may opt to correct errors, but it is not compelled to do so.” Id. at 2599 (citations omitted).
As noted previously, every panel that addressed the issue presented in Halbert was unable to reach a unanimous decision. The Supreme Court’s decision in Halbert was 6-3, with Justices Thomas, Scalia, and Chief Justice Rhenquist dissenting. Hal-bert, 125 S.Ct. at 2582. The Sixth Circuit had previously addressed the issue en banc in 2003 in Tesmer v. Granholm, and reached a 7-4 decision, finding the Michigan system unconstitutional under Douglas. Tesmer, 333 F.3d 683.4 Even the Michigan Supreme Court was divided in People v. Bulger, in which it affirmed the constitutionality of the Michigan system in *885a 4-2 decision, with one justice not participating. Bulger, 462 Mich, at 495, 614 N.W.2d 103.
The retroactivity test articulated by the Court in Teague is not determined by the fact that the Supreme Court applied existing case law in reaching its decision, but rather asks if reasonable jurists could differ as to whether the prior law compelled, the result in the current decision. Beard, 542 U.S. at 414, 124 S.Ct. 2504. The State convincingly argues that the Court’s decision in Halbert was framed by two Supreme Court decisions and that reasonable jurists could and did differ as to which classification the Michigan system of appeals belonged. For a rule of criminal procedure to be considered something other than a new rule under Teague, “no other reasonable interpretations” of then-existing law can exist. Two cases reasonably governed the result of the Halbert decision, and the rule announced in Hal-bert should be considered a “new rule” under Teague.
II. The right to counsel in a discretionary appeal from a plea-based conviction does not fall under Teague’s second exception for “watershed rules of criminal procedure.”
Because the majority finds that Halbert did not announce a new rule, it does not reach the second Teague inquiry as to whether the rule announced falls under one of the two Teague exceptions.5 The parties agree that the first exception is not relevant in the present case. However, the Petitioner contends that rule announced in Halbert fits into the second exception, which is reserved for “ ‘watershed rules of criminal procedure’ implicating the fundamental fairness and accuracy of the criminal proceeding.” Saffle v. Parks, 494 U.S. 484, 495, 110 S.Ct. 1257, 108 L.Ed.2d 415 (1990) (citing Teague, 489 U.S. at 311, 109 S.Ct. 1060). As the Supreme Court noted in Teague, this exception is to be construed narrowly “[bjecause we operate from the premise that such procedures would be so central to an accurate determination of innocence or guilt, we believe it unlikely that many such components of basic due process have yet to emerge.” Teague, 489 U.S. at 313, 109 S.Ct. 1060. “Whatever the precise scope of this exception, it is clearly meant to apply only to a small core of rules requiring ‘observance of those procedures that ... are implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.’ ” Graham v. Collins, 506 U.S. 461, 478, 113 S.Ct. 892, 122 L.Ed.2d 260 (1993) (citing Teague, 489 U.S. at 311, 109 S.Ct. 1060).
The Supreme Court has never retroactively applied a new rule of criminal procedure under the watershed rule exception post-Teague. Beard, 542 U.S. at 417, 124 S.Ct. 2504. In its most recent case addressing the possible retroactive application of a new rule, the Court held that even “the fact that a new rule removes some remote possibility of arbitrary infliction of the death sentence does not suffice to bring it within Teague’s second exception.” Id. at 419-20, 124 S.Ct. 2504. The Court looked to the fact that the rale in question “applies fairly narrowly and works no fundamental shift in ‘our understanding of the bedrock procedural elements’ essential to fundamental fairness.” Id. (emphasis in original). The Court also *886noted that “because any qualifying rule ‘would be so central to an accurate determination of innocence or guilt [that it is] unlikely that many such components of basic due process have yet to emerge,’ it should come as no surprise that we have yet to find a new rule that falls under the second Teague exception.” Id. at 417, 124 S.Ct. 2504 (citations omitted) (alteration in original).
The right to counsel in an application for leave to appeal a plea-based conviction does not fit into this narrowly drawn exception for “watershed rules of criminal procedure” or “bedrock procedural elements.” The right to counsel has historically been applied retroactively, such as in Daegele v. Kansas, 375 U.S. 1, 84 S.Ct. 89, 11 L.Ed.2d 44 (1963), which retroactively applied Douglas, and Arsenault v. Massachusetts, 393 U.S. 5, 89 S.Ct. 35, 21 L.Ed.2d 5 (1968), which retroactively applied White v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 59, 83 S.Ct. 1050, 10 L.Ed.2d 193 (1963) (establishing the right to counsel in plea hearings), but these cases were decided prior to the Supreme Court’s establishment of the Teague test for retroactive application of new rules on collateral review. As the Eleventh Circuit noted recently, “[bjecause of the substantial difference in analysis, the pre-Teague decisions applying Gideon-related rights retroactively do not control whether a post-Teague decision announcing a new one is retroactively applicable.” Howard v. United States, 374 F.3d 1068, 1078 (11th Cir.2004).
The Petitioner accurately points out that the Supreme Court has repeatedly identified Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335, 83 S.Ct. 792, 9 L.Ed.2d 799 (1963), which “established an affirmative right to counsel in all felony cases” as the example of a “watershed rule of criminal procedure.” Beard, 542 U.S. at 418, 124 S.Ct. 2504. However, the Petitioner6 misrepresents the Court’s use of Gideon as an example to include all cases involving the right to counsel. (Petr.’s Br. at 21) In contrast, the Court has stated that Gideon is the prime example because of its “sweeping nature” and the “primacy and centrality of the rule adopted.” Id.; Saffle, 494 U.S. at 495, 110 S.Ct. 1257. Accordingly, the Court has “not hesitated to hold that less sweeping and fundamental rules do not fall within Teague’s second exception.” Beard, 542 U.S. at 418, 124 S.Ct. 2504.
For a “new rule” to fit within this exception, failure to apply it retroactively must “undermine the fundamental fairness that must underlie a conviction or seriously diminish the likelihood of obtaining an accurate conviction.” Teague, 489 U.S. at 315, 109 S.Ct. 1060. Although the Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed that the right to counsel at all felony trials is exactly the kind of “watershed rule” that this exception is designed to address, that rule is significantly broader and more fundamental that the narrow rule announced in Halbert. In Halbert, the Supreme Court held “that the Due Process and Equal *887Protection Clauses require the appointment of counsel for defendants, convicted on their pleas, who seek access to first-tier review in the Michigan Court of Appeals.” Halbert, 125 S.Ct. at 2586. According to the Petitioner “to the extent that this constitutes a new rule (notwithstanding Douglas), it constitutes an extension of the right to counsel, and it must be applied retroactively.” (Petr’s Br. at 23)
The Petitioner’s argument is not supported by the Supreme Court’s analysis post-Teague. The rule announced in Hal-bert is unlikely to apply to any situation other than the particular system of appeals from plea-based convictions established by the Michigan legislature. It does not represent a shift in “bedrock procedural elements” and it cannot be said to be “on par” with Gideon. See Beard, 542 U.S. at 418, 124 S.Ct. 2504. The purpose of the “watershed rules of criminal procedure” exception to the general rule prohibiting retroactive application of new rules of criminal procedure on collateral review is to provide for accuracy in convictions and the “fundamental fairness of the trial.” Teague, 489 U.S. at 312, 109 S.Ct. 1060. The scope of that exception is limited “to those new procedures without which the likelihood of an accurate conviction is seriously diminished.” Id. at 313, 109 S.Ct. 1060. In Ross, the Court stated that,
[t]he fact that an appeal has been provided does not automatically mean that a State then acts unfairly by refusing to provide counsel to indigent defendants at every stage of the way. Douglas v. California, supra. Unfairness results only if indigents are singled out by the State and denied meaningful access to the appellate system because of their poverty.
Ross, 417 U.S. at 611, 94 S.Ct. 2437 (emphasis in original).
Moreover, the denial of the right to counsel in an appeal does not rise to the level of providing “fundamental fairness at trial” because, as the Supreme Court stated in Goeke v. Branch, 514 U.S. 115, 120, 115 S.Ct. 1275, 131 L.Ed.2d 152 (1995), “due process does not require a State to provide appellate process at all.” Goeke, 514 U.S. at 120, 115 S.Ct. 1275 (holding that the Eighth Circuit’s ruling that “it is a violation of Fourteenth Amendment due process for a state appellate court to dismiss the appeal of a recaptured fugitive where there is no demonstrated adverse effect on the appellate process” did not apply retroactively under the second Teag-ue exception). In Goeke, the Court held that “[b]eeause due process does not require a State to provide appellate process at all, a former fugitive’s right to appeal cannot be said to ‘be so central to an accurate determination of innocence or guilt,’ as to fall within this exception to the Teague bar.” Id. (citations omitted).
Additionally, the Gideon rule establishing the right to counsel at all felony trials is significantly different from the instant rule establishing the right to counsel in a discretionary appeal from a plea-based conviction. The Supreme Court has stated that a “defendant needs an attorney on appeal not as a shield to protect him against being ‘haled into court’ by the State and stripped of his presumption of his innocence, but rather as a sword to upset the prior determination of guilt.” Ross, 417 U.S. at 610-11, 94 S.Ct. 2437. As Justice Thomas noted in his dissent in Halbert, “because a defendant who pleads guilty ‘may not thereafter raise independent claims relating to the deprivation of constitutional rights that occurred prior to the entry of the guilty plea,’ the potential issues that can be raised on appeal are more limited.” Halbert, 125 S.Ct. at 2598 (Thomas, J. dissenting) (citations omitted). Similarly, the Michigan Supreme Court reasoned that,
*888[p]lea proceedings are also shorter, simpler, and more routine than trials; the record most often consists of the ‘factual basis’ for the plea that is provided to the trial court. In contrast with trials, less danger exists in plea cases that the record will be so unclear, or the errors so hidden, that the defendant’s appeal will be reduced to a meaningless ritual.
Bulger, 462 Mich, at 517, 614 N.W.2d 103. Accordingly, the Supreme Court’s “new rule” requiring that defendants receive appointed counsel in discretionary appeals from plea-based conviction does not rise to the requisite level of implicating the “fundamental fairness at trial” and, therefore, does not fit into Teague’s exception for watershed rules of criminal procedure. Teague, 489 U.S. at 312, 109 S.Ct. 1060.
Because the rule announced in Halbert narrowly applies to discretionary appeals from plea-based convictions, and because due process does not require that a state provide an appeal at all, Teague’s retroac-tivity analysis prohibits the application of Halbert’s holding on collateral review.
III. Conclusion
The Supreme Court announced a new rule in Halbert, that the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses require the appointment of counsel for defendants seeking leave to appeal from a plea-based conviction under the Michigan system. This rule does not fit into the narrowly-drawn Teague exception for “watershed rules of criminal procedure” and “bedrock procedural elements” and, thus, should not apply retroactively to Simmons’ case. Therefore, I respectfully dissent from the majority’s finding that Halbert affords Simmons relief on collateral review.

. In his dissent, Justice Thomas cited a number of cases holding that Douglas applied only to appeals as of right:
Douglas, 372 U.S., at 357, 83 S.Ct. 814, 9 L.Ed.2d 811; Ross, 417 U.S., at 608, 94 S.Ct. 2437, 41 L.Ed.2d 341 ("[Douglas] extended only to initial appeals as of right”); Evitts v. Lucey, 469 U.S. 387, 394, 105 S.Ct. 830, 83 L.Ed.2d 821 (1985) (Douglas “is limited to the first appeal as of right"); Pennsylvania v. Finley, 481 U.S. 551, 555, 107 S.Ct. 1990, 95 L.Ed.2d 539 (1987) ("[T]he right to appointed counsel extends to the first appeal of right, and no further”); Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722, 755, 111 S.Ct. 2546, 115 L.Ed.2d 640 (1991) (“[Douglas] establishes] that an indigent criminal defendant has a right to appointed *882counsel in his first appeal as of right in state court”); see also Wainwright v. Torna, 455 U.S. 586, 587, 102 S.Ct. 1300, 71 L.Ed.2d 475 (1982) (per curiam) ("[Ross] held that a criminal defendant does not have a constitutional right to counsel to pursue discretionary state appeals or applications for review in this Court”).
Halbert, 125 S.Ct. at 2597 n. 1 (Thomas, J., dissenting).

. In Beard, the Supreme Court held that the rule announced in Mills v. Maryland, 486 U.S. 367, 108 S.Ct. 1860, 100 L.Ed.2d 384 (1988) was not mandated by the Court's decision in Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U.S. 586, 98 S.Ct. 2954, 57 L.Ed.2d 973 (1978), even though the Court relied on Lockett and its progeny in deciding Mills. The Court found that the Lockett rule stands for the proposition "that the sentencer must be allowed to consider any mitigating evidence." Beard, 542 U.S. at 414, 124 S.Ct. 2504. In Mills, the Court "held invalid capital sentencing schemes that require juries to disregard mitigating factors not found unanimously.” Id. at 408, 124 S.Ct. 2504. The Court in Beard found that while the Lockett line of cases focused on the "sentencer’s ability to consider mitigating evidence,” the “Mills’ innovation rests with its shift to focus on individual jurors.” Id. at 414, 124 S.Ct. 2504.

. Justice Scalia and Chief Justice Rehnquist joined in Justice Thomas' dissent. However, the Chief Justice did not join with respect to Part III-B-3 which addressed the issue of the plea colloquy and Halbert’s waiver of his right to appeal.

. Judges Martin, Boggs, Daughtrey, Moore, Cole, Clay and Gilman formed the majority. Judges Rogers, Siler, Batchelder, and Gibbons concurred in part and dissented on standing grounds. Judges Norris, Siler, Bat-chelder, and Gibbons dissented as to the majority’s holding that the Michigan system was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court reversed the decision on third party standing grounds and declined to reach the "classification question.” Kowalski, 543 U.S. 125, 125 S.Ct. 564, 160 L.Ed.2d 519; Halbert, 125 S.Ct. at 2586.

. The majority, however, indicates in footnote 2 of its opinion that "Simmons's alternative argument that if Halbert was in fact a new rule, it should be deemed a watershed rule of criminal procedure (the second Teague exception) could potentially be meritorious.” In short, the majority reasons that the "new rule” should be applied retroactively because Halbert involved an extension of the right to counsel on the basis of accuracy and fairness.

. The majority also makes this representation in Footnote 2 of its opinion. However, all the Supreme Court cases cited by the majority and the Petitioner specifically identify Gideon v. Wainwright, and not the overall right to counsel as the "paradigm” example of a watershed rule. See e.g., Beard, 542 U.S. at 417, 124 S.Ct. 2504 ("In providing guidance as to what might fall within this exception, we have repeatedly referred to the rule of Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335, 83 S.Ct. 792, 9 L.Ed.2d 799 (1963) (right to counsel), and only this rule.”); Saffle, 494 U.S. at 495, 110 S.Ct. 1257 ("Although the precise contours of this exception may be difficult to discern, we have usually cited Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335, 83 S.Ct. 792, 9 L.Ed.2d 799 (1963), holding that a defendant has the right to be represented by counsel in all criminal trials for serious offenses, to illustrate the type of rule coming within the exception.”).