Court Opinion

ID: 9714773
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 05:45:20.481465+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:28.443091
License: Public Domain

*699BARTEAU, Judge,
dissenting.
On direct appeal, Shoulders argued that a jury cannot accurately assess the credibility of an accomplice-witness who testifies in exchange for the opportunity to plead guilty to a reduced charge unless the jury knows the benefit gained by that accomplice, measured by cross-examining the accomplice for his knowledge of the difference in potential sentences on the original charge and the reduced charge. The supreme court disagreed. Shoulders v. State (1985), Ind., 480 N.E.2d 211. But, fifteen months later the supreme court reversed its position on the issue. Jarrett v. State (1986), Ind., 498 N.E.2d 967.1 Shoulders petitioned for post-conviction relief, seeking to have Jarrett retroactively applied to his case.
I disagree with the majority's conclusion that in this case "res judicata bars relit-igation of an issue ... decided against a defendant on appeal but ... decided differently in a subsequent case involving a different defendant." Majority op. at 695-696. The majority leaps over recent cases that reject such a conclusion, reaching back instead to a 1974 case that is a quite slender reed.
Furthermore, the majority ignores the State's concession that res judicato does not bar relitigation of the issue. I agree with the State, that "[als the defendant correctly notes, when Post-Conviction relief is sought where the issue has been adversely decided, but subsequently a change occurs in case law, then the reviewing court engages in retrospective analysis to determine whether the new rule should be retrospectively applied." State's Brief 6.2
The majority relies exclusively on Layton v. State (1974), 261 Ind. 567, 307 N.E.2d 477 (Layton III), in which the supreme court gave three reasons to deny post-conviction relief. The first reason sufficed to decide the case, thereby reducing the second and third to obiter dicta. The third reason, already lacking force as mere dictum, appears even further enervated on close reading.
The supreme court decided Layton III by refusing to review a claimed error in questioning of the jury venire, because the voir dire had not been recorded. Upon that pronouncement, the court resolved what it had presented as the first issue on appeal-whether the defendant had waived objection to the State's questioning of the jury venire by stipulating that voir dire not be recorded. Thus, the court held the issue waived. The holding of waiver rendered moot what the court had presented as the second issue-whether the guilty verdict was rendered invalid by the State's voir *700dire questions. Therefore, the court's see-ond and third reasons are properly considered obiter dicta. The superfluous nature of the second and third reasons appears in the court's own words: "There are two additional reasons why we cannot go to the second issue." Layton III, 307 N.E.2d at 479.3
The second additional reason, that is, the third reason overall, is quoted by the majority opinion with emphasis added:
Secondly, the same issue, although differently assigned, was reviewed and determined upon the defendant's direct appeal and is therefore res judica-ta.... This issue was decided against the defendant and is final, notwithstanding that [Price and Causey ], cases upon which he here leans heavily for support, had not yet been decided.
Majority op. at 696-697 (quoting Layton III, 307 N.E.2d at 479).
At first blush, that is, in the context-less format in which the majority presents them, the underlined words do support the majority holding. - However, that first blush loses its radiance when the words are exposed as obiter dicta, and the glow fades completely upon reading Layton III beyond the majority's bare-bones excerpt.
Layton III merely reiterates the general rule that issues decided on direct appeal cannot be relitigated in the post-conviction forum. The question here is the existence of a retroactivity exception to the general rule, an exception to allow relitigation of an issue decided on direct appeal if subsequent case law overrules the prior decision.4
The majority stopped short in its reading of Layton III The court there went on to distinguish the cases relied on by the petitioner. Because the cases which the petitioner sought to have retroactively applied to his situation were different, no retroac-tivity issue was raised. Thus, Layton III is simply an example of the general rule, and does not set out a res judicata bar to an exception founded in retroactivity.
The majority's res judicata bar is unsupported in our case law. To the contrary, case law recognizes a retroactivity exception. In Sulie v. State (1988), Ind., 522 N.E.2d 380, reh'g denied the supreme court remarked "Sulie has been unsuceessful in raising the issue in the federal courts and in his original appeal," id. at 382, but nonetheless went on to the merits of retroactivity analysis, never mentioning either res judicata or Layton III. Another example of the retroactivity exception appears in the following words from our supreme court:
Appellant, in his first appeal, argued that the evidence was insufficient [on the age element of the offense]. The Court held that appellant waived the right to appeal the issue of the sufficiency of evidence of that element.... Subsequent to the ren*701dition of that opinion this Court overruled waiver caselaw of this genre, and ruled that insufficiency of evidence is so fundamental that it may be raised for the the first time on appeal. The post-conviction court below agreed with appellant on this point and reached the merits of his insufficiency claim, but ... determined that the claim was not sustainable. This appeal followed.
Finch v. State (1983), Ind., 454 N.E.2d 856, 857 (citations omitted) (emphasis added).
In Finch, the supreme court reached the merits, never mentioning res judicata or Layton III. In a case where the supreme court did mention res judicata, it did so in a manner tending to preclude the holding of the majority here. In that case, Osborne v. State (1985), Ind., 481 N.E.2d 376, the court suggested that an issue raised on direct appeal can be considered anew in post-conviction proceedings if the petitioner supplies "additional argument." Id. at 381 ("Appellant's claim that his sentence constitutes cruel and unusual punishment was raised and determined by this Court on direct appeal. Since no additional argument is presented by appellant, our earlier decision is res judicata and thus this issue is not reviewable in post-conviction proceedings." (citation omitted)).
The court of appeals has also reached the merits in post-conviction cases urging retroactive application of new law in situations where the same issue had been previously argued on direct appeal. See Powell v. State (1991), Ind.App., 574 N.E.2d 331; Terry v. State (1990), Ind.App., 563 N.E.2d 1301 (res judicata barred petition because new rule was both announced and applied in direct appeal); Berry v. State (1974), 162 Ind.App. 626, 321 N.E.2d 207, trans. denied.
In my opinion, the proper course here is remand to the trial court for a decision whether applying Jarrett to Shoulders' case, according to the Fossey tripartite test, would require reversal of Shoulders' conviction. Hence, I express no opinion on the other issues raised in this appeal.
The majority opinion seizes upon an afterthought in an obscure case and ignores both contrary case law and the State's concession that res judicate does not bar Shoulders' petition. I respectfully dissent.

. Jarrett "implicitly overruled or at least modified" Shoulders. Samuels v. State (1987), Ind.App., 505 N.E.2d 120, 123 (footnote omitted). The overruling of Shoulders is implicit rather than express-Jarrett did not cite Shoulders.

. - At this point, it is necessary to explain that this case should be decided under the law of retroac-tivity existing prior to Daniels v. State (1990), Ind., 561 N.E.2d 487. Daniels adopted the view of the U.S. Supreme Court, expressed in Teague v. Lane (1989), 489 U.S. 288, 109 S.Ct. 1060, 103 L.Ed.2d 334, rek'g denied that in post-conviction cases, retroactive application of new rules of criminal procedure should be limited to two severely restricted categories, neither of which would seem to include the cross-examination issue discussed in Shoulders and Jarrett.
Prior to Daniels, retroactivity analysis followed a tripartite test crafted by the U.S. Supreme Court and adopted in Indiana in Fossey v. State (1970), 254 Ind. 173, 258 N.E.2d 616. The Fossey test focuses on the relationship between the new rule and trial accuracy-the more closely the rule affects the reliability of verdicts, the more likely it will be retroactively applied. The trial court denied Shoulders petition three weeks before our supreme court decided Daniels. Therefore, Shoulders petition should have been analyzed according to Fossey, not Daniels and Teague v. Lane. The majority intimates that application of the wrong caselaw standard is permissible, because the decision below came only three weeks before the standard changed. I cannot concur in that suggestion. The law of retroactivity in post-conviction cases in Indiana was Fossey, until changed by Daniels, not until three weeks before Daniels. Moreover, Shoulders filed his petition in 1986, before both Teague v. Lane and Daniels That Shoulders' case was decided close in time to Daniels resulted from the delay of 1,446 days between filing of the petition and the trial court's decision.
I note that the State, after conceding that res judicata did not bar Shoulders' petition, went on to analyze the case according to the Fossey standard.

. The court described the issues and its holding thus:
I. Did the defendant waive his objection to the State's interrogating the prospective jurors with reference to their beliefs concerning the death penalty, by stipulating that the examination not be reported?
IL. - Was the verdict of guilty ... invalid by reason of the State's having so interrogated the veniremen?
What the defendant is saying is that it is not necessary for us to know the specific questions asked of the prospective jurors, since we know generally that they were related to death penalty sentiments. But we do not know that such questions were asked, only that they were objected to and that the trial judge did not consider them to be improper. We are asked, then, to conclude that certain questions were asked from a record that merely disclosed an in limine motion to preclude them and an adverse ruling upon the motion. This we cannot do. There are two additional reasons why we cannot go to the second issue.
Layton IIL, 307 N.E.2d at 478-79.

. To say the exception would allow relitigation of an already argued issue is not to say that reversal would be warranted. Rather, the post-conviction court would evaluate the petitioner's argument in light of the tripartite test from Fossey v. State (1970), 254 Ind. 173, 258 N.E.2d 616 or Daniels v. State (1990), Ind., 561 N.E.2d 487. See n. 2, supra.