Court Opinion

ID: 9473081
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:18:53.063963+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:18.600400
License: Public Domain

SWYGERT, Senior Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I agree that if we are precluded from retroactively applying the rule of Edwards v. Arizona, 451 U.S. 477, 101 S.Ct. 1880, 68 L.Ed.2d 378 (1981), we must reinstate our decision in White v. Finkbeiner, 611 F.2d 186 (7th Cir.1979) (“White II”), in which we affirmed the denial of White’s petition for habeas relief. Nevertheless, I would hold that the government here waived its right to contest the retroactive application of Edwards. Accordingly, I would uphold our decision in White v. Finkbeiner, 687 F.2d 885 (7th Cir.1982) (“White III”), in which we relied on Edwards to grant habeas relief.
I am willing to concede that the circumstances in Moya v. United States, 745 F.2d 1044 (7th Cir.1984), present a stronger case for the application of a strict waiver rule. But I do not see how that ends our inquiry. The majority’s distinction between the circumstances here and those in Moya at best show that this is a more difficult case, not that a different result is necessary.
In Moya the government attempted to raise factual issues that were not presented to the district court. We therefore had no findings to review, and a remand for further findings would have been unfair given the time elapsed and given that the waiver was apparently a part of trial strategy. See Moya, 745 F.2d at 1047-1048. In the case at bar the newly-raised issue is purely one of law, and our ultimate decision re*546quires no further factfinding. That the resolution of the newly-raised issue here would be less burdensome on the courts as well as the adverse party is only one factor to be weighed, however. If such a consideration were dispositive, then issues of law could never be waived, which is surely not the case. Cf. Rubin, Toward a General Theory of Waiver, 28 U.C.L.A.L.Rev. 478, 478-79 (1981) (waiver is an ubiquitous concept, appearing in almost every area of law and in connection with almost every type of legal right).
As the long history of this case demonstrates, society has an interest in providing swift and final dispute resolution and in conserving judicial resources. By forcing litigants to raise issues or lose them, waiver doctrine facilitates the speedy and final resolution of disputes. Had the government raised the retroactivity issue when this case was remanded to us for reconsideration in light of Edwards, and had we been prescient enough to anticipate the rule of Solem v. Stumes, — U.S.—, 104 S.Ct. 1338, 79 L.Ed.2d 579 (1984), this fourth White decision would have been unnecessary.1 Absent “exceptional cases or particular circumstances ... where injustice might otherwise result,” Hormel v. Helvering, 312 U.S. 552, 557, 61 S.Ct. 719, 721, 85 L.Ed. 1037 (1941), I would hold that litigants waive issues of fact or law that are not raised in the proceedings in the appellate court that precede a Supreme Court remand.2
Applying this rule to the case at bar, I note that the government offers no justification for its failure to raise the retroactivity issue in White III, nor can it point to any exceptional circumstances that might implicate the equitable principles announced in Hormel, 312 U.S. at 557, 61 S.Ct. at 721. Nor do I see how the government could have been the victim of unfair surprise in not anticipating that retroactivity is a viable issue. To be sure, “a legal system based on precedent has a built-in presumption of retroactivity,” Solem, 104 S.Ct. at 1341, and this court in White III apparently proceeded on this presumption in the absence of any effort on the part of the litigants to contest retroactivity. But retroactive application of a new constitutional doctrine is not compelled, Solem, 104 S.Ct. at 1341, and ever since Linkletter v. Walker, 381 U.S. 618, 85 S.Ct. 1731, 14 L.Ed.2d 601 (1965), the issue has always been treated as an open question, see Solem, 104 S.Ct. at 1341; United States v. Johnson, 457 U.S. 537, 542, 102 S.Ct. 2579, 2583, 73 L.Ed.2d 202 (1982). I would hold that the government waived its right to contest the retroactive application of Edwards when it failed to raise the issue in White III.
The majority further reasons that the Supreme Court’s remand for reconsideration notwithstanding the government’s failure to raise the retroactivity issue in its petition for certiorari was an implicit mandate to reach the issue of retroactivity. Leaving aside the plain meaning of the language of the Supreme Court’s order “for further consideration in light of” So-lem 3 (as opposed to an order “for further consideration of the merits of” White III and “to apply the holding of Solem ”), I do not believe the Supreme Court intended to constrain our reconsideration in this manner. For, if the majority’s argument is *547correct, then on remand from Edwards in White III it would have been erroneous for us to refuse to reach the merits on the grounds that Edwards was not retroactive. Yet, in hindsight, that would have been precisely the correct thing to do.
Nor am I persuaded by the purported significance of the Supreme Court’s decision to remand in spite of the government’s failure to raise the retroactivity issue in its petition for certiorari. See supra at 543. Supreme Court precedent indicates that in some circumstances, equity will ignore a waiver. See Hormel, 312 U.S. at 557, 61 S.Ct. at 721. I would interpret the Supreme Court’s remand not as an implicit mandate to ignore the waiver issue, but as an implicit acknowledgment that the waiver issue is always an open one. That is, our duty on remand is not to ignore the waiver issue, but to decide it for ourselves; the Supreme Court’s decision not to dismiss the petition on waiver grounds was simply an act of prudence, inasmuch as a full reconsideration of the case might reveal circumstances that would make it inequitable to apply a strict waiver rule.
I do share some sympathy with the view that my proposed waiver rule could conceivably undercut the Supreme Court’s attempt to enforce the nonretroactivity rule of Solem. See supra at 543. For if in most cases the government failed to raise the retroactivity issue during proceedings subsequent to Edwards and prior to So-lem, the ultimate result would be to render Edwards retroactive de facto. But in the absence of any empirical data, we must be guided by Supreme Court precedent that indicates that ever since 1965, the retroac-tivity issue has been an open and foreseeable question, see supra at 546, and deduce from this that government lawyers were generally competent enough to raise the issue in most cases.
Because I believe the government waived its right to contest the retroactivity of Edwards, I respectfully dissent. I would uphold our decision in White III, in which we relied on Edwards to grant White habeas relief.

. Even if we had held the Edwards rule to be retroactive, our opinion presumably would have aided the Supreme Court in its ultimate resolution of the issue. By allowing issues to percolate up through the various circuits, the Supreme Court is able to benefit from observing the treatment of issues in different contexts, the alternative resolutions of issues, and even the mistakes of appellate courts. The waiver doctrine facilitates this common law process by encouraging the parties to raise issues in the appellate courts before reaching the Supreme Court.

. An important "particular circumstance” in considering whether to deem an issue of law waived is whether the viability of the issue is so much in doubt or so obscure that a Supreme Court remand to consider the issue is not reasonably foreseeable. As I note below, the retro-activity issue is one that routinely attends the announcement of a new constitutional doctrine, and therefore, the government here is not the victim of unfair surprise.

. Fairman v. White, — U.S. —, 104 S.Ct. 1433, 79 L.Ed.2d 756 (1984).