Court Opinion

ID: 9949126
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-03-08 20:12:00.564711+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:27:00.038904
License: Public Domain

03/07/2024
                     IN THE SUPREME COURT OF TENNESSEE
                                 AT JACKSON
                                        April 5, 2023 Session

   STATE OF TENNESSEE v. TONY THOMAS and LARONDA TURNER

                Appeal by Permission from the Court of Criminal Appeals
                           Criminal Court for Shelby County
                  No. C17-00608, 17-00382 J. Robert Carter, Jr., Judge
                        ___________________________________

                                No. W2019-01202-SC-R11-CD
                           ___________________________________

SARAH K. CAMPBELL, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part.

       I join in full the majority opinion’s analysis of the Brady issue and its judgment
affirming Tony Thomas’s conviction. I also agree with much of the majority’s analysis
regarding the accomplice-corroboration rule, including its decision to abrogate that rule. I
respectfully disagree, however, with the majority’s conclusion that our holding abrogating
the accomplice-corroboration rule should apply only in future cases and pending cases that
have not yet gone to trial. I would instead apply that holding here—and to other cases
pending in trial courts or in appellate courts on direct review—and affirm Laronda Turner’s
conviction on that basis. I write separately to offer an additional reason why the
accomplice-corroboration rule should be abrogated and to explain why our decision should
apply retroactively.1

                                                     I.

      As the majority opinion details, Tennessee is the only State with a judicially created
accomplice-corroboration requirement. In the sixteen States with a similar requirement, it
is imposed by statute or rule, not by judicial decision. See State v. Jones, 216 A.3d 907,
918 & nn.6–7 (Md. 2019). The majority’s decision to abrogate our accomplice-
corroboration rule rests largely on Tennessee’s outlier status. It concludes that the
accomplice-corroboration rule is “effectively ‘obsolete’ in a common law context” and that
“the General Assembly is better suited to decide whether such a rule need be effectuated”
in Tennessee.

        1
          For purposes of this opinion, “retroactive” application of a judicial decision means application of
a holding to the parties before the court, to cases pending in trial courts or in appellate courts on direct
review, and to cases that arise in the future. See, e.g., Lease v. Tipton, 722 S.W.2d 379, 379 (Tenn. 1986)
(describing this as the “pipeline approach” to retroactivity).
                                                     1
        I do not disagree with the majority’s analysis in this regard, but what I find even
more troubling about the accomplice-corroboration rule is that it was a departure from the
common law from the beginning. Under the common law of England,2 it was well settled
that “the testimony of an accomplice, if it satisfies the jury beyond a reasonable doubt of
the guilt of the defendant, may be sufficient to warrant a conviction although it is not
corroborated.” Sherrill v. State, 321 S.W.2d 811, 814 (Tenn. 1959); see also 7 John Henry
Wigmore, Evidence § 2056, at 405 (Chadbourn rev. 1978) (explaining that “for a long time
no question was made as to the sufficiency of [an accomplice’s] testimony when admitted”
because the “conception of an oath . . . tended to keep this question in the background”);
Simon Greenleaf, Treatise on the Law of Evidence § 380, at 426 (1842) (“[T]he jury may,
if they please, act upon the evidence of the accomplice, without any confirmation of his
statement.”).

       Because judges harbored reasonable suspicions about the reliability of this evidence,
they eventually began instructing juries to exercise caution when considering accomplice
testimony and discouraged them from convicting on this evidence alone. Wigmore, supra,
§ 2056, at 405 & n.3 (citing examples from the late 1700s). Yet this practice was not “a
statement of a rule of law binding upon the jury.” Id.; see also Greenleaf, supra, § 380, at
426. It was merely a “counsel of caution” that the jury could either heed or completely
disregard. Wigmore, supra, § 2056, at 408 (emphasis omitted).

       Most state courts faithfully adopted and applied this common-law approach. See id.
at 408 n.6 (collecting cases); see also Paul T. Dunn, Accomplice Testimony: Is
Corroboration Necessary?, 6 Cath. U. L. Rev. 165, 165–66 (1957). Tennessee, however,
was among the minority of courts that departed from the common law and transformed
what once was a cautionary jury instruction into a strict rule of evidence. See Wigmore,
supra, § 2056, at 408 n.5 (listing Tennessee as one of the “few courts” to misunderstand
the English cases as establishing a rule of evidence).

        It is true that the accomplice-corroboration rule has a long history in Tennessee. See
Sherrill, 321 S.W.2d at 814 (noting that Tennessee courts “at the very beginning of the
judicial history of this State . . . required corroboration in all felony cases”); Kinchelow v.
State, 24 Tenn. (5 Hum.) 9, 12 (1844) (showing that the rule existed in Tennessee by at
least the mid-nineteenth century). But our adoption of that rule was wrong as an initial
matter because it marked an unjustified departure from the governing common law of
England. If there was a need to depart from the common law for policy reasons, that was a
decision the legislature should have made in the first instance. I therefore agree with the
Court’s abrogation of the accomplice-corroboration rule, but I do so primarily because it is
a long-overdue course correction.
        2
           When Tennessee became a State, it was governed by the common law of England “as it stood at
and before the separation of the colonies.” Smith v. State, 385 S.W.2d 748, 750 (Tenn. 1965); see also Moss
v. State, 173 S.W. 859, 861 (Tenn. 1915) (explaining that Tennessee derived its common law from North
Carolina, which had adopted the common law of England).
                                                    2
                                              II.

       Although I join the majority in abrogating the accomplice-corroboration rule, I
disagree with its decision to apply this holding only prospectively to “trials commencing
after the date of the mandate.” For three reasons, the holding instead should apply
retroactively to this case and others in the pipeline. First, retroactivity has long been a
hallmark of judicial decisionmaking. Second, our precedents consistently have applied
overruling decisions in criminal cases retroactively even when they disadvantage the
defendant. Third, prospective overruling gives the Court too much discretion and poses a
significant threat to stare decisis.

                                              A.

        A “fundamental rule of ‘retrospective operation’ . . . has governed ‘[j]udicial
decisions . . . for near a thousand years.’” Harper v. Va. Dep’t of Tax’n, 509 U.S. 86, 94
(1993) (second and third alterations in original) (quoting Kuhn v. Fairmont Coal Co., 215
U.S. 349, 372 (1910) (Holmes, J., dissenting)). This traditional rule of retroactivity is
rooted in the Blackstonian view that judges “do not make the law but only declare what it
has always been.” Allan Beever, The Declaratory Theory of Law, 33 Oxford J. Legal Stud.
421, 421 (2013); see also 1 William Blackstone, Commentaries *69 (explaining that the
role of a judge is not “to pronounce a new law, but to maintain and expound the old one”
based on “the known laws and customs of the land”). In Blackstone’s view, even when the
need arises to overrule a precedent, a judge does not “make a new law” but rather
“vindicate[s] the old one from misrepresentation.” Id. at *70. If a former judicial decision
is “manifestly absurd or unjust” so that it must be overruled, “it is declared, not that such
a sentence was bad law, but that it was not law; that is, that it is not the established custom
of the realm.” Id. It therefore follows that retroactivity is “an inherent characteristic of the
judicial power.” Harper, 509 U.S. at 107 (Scalia, J., concurring) (noting that the “original
and enduring American perception of the judicial role sprang” from Blackstone’s
jurisprudence).

       This longstanding principle of judicial retroactivity is “sometimes said to inhere in
the very structure of the Constitution.” Bryan A. Garner et al., The Law of Judicial
Precedent 309 (2016). Congress has the power to make “forward-looking laws of general
applicability but [is] generally forbidden to act retroactively.” Id. Judges, meanwhile, “look
backward, resolving specific cases and controversies and pronouncing what the law is.” Id.
In this way, the retroactivity of judicial decisions serves as the “principal distinction”
separating the judiciary from the legislature. Harper, 509 U.S. at 107 (Scalia, J.,
concurring); see also Robert von Moschzisker, Stare Decisis in Courts of Last Resort, 37
Harv. L. Rev. 409, 426 (1924) (arguing that prospective decisionmaking is “plain and
outright legislation by the courts”); Candler S. Rogers, Perspectives on Prospective
Overruling, 36 UMKC L. Rev. 35, 45 (1968) (noting that “prospective overruling by its
very nature appears more like legislation than overruling which is given retrospective

                                               3
effect”); Neil M. Gorsuch, Of Lions and Bears, Judges and Legislators, and the Legacy of
Justice Scalia, 66 Case W. Res. L. Rev. 905, 909–10 (2016) (noting that the founders
“understood the legislative power as the power to prescribe new rules of general
applicability for the future” and the “judicial power as . . . a backward-looking authority”).

        Many state courts initially adopted the Blackstonian view and applied newly
announced decisions retroactively, including in criminal cases. See, e.g., Falconer v.
Simmons, 41 S.E. 193, 196 (W. Va. 1902) (describing “the fundamental rule” that “when
former decisions are overruled they are considered as never having been the law”); Storrie
v. Cortes, 38 S.W. 154, 159 (Tex. 1896) (“The policy of conferring upon this court the
power to limit its decisions to the future is a question for the people, and we cannot, under
any notion of injustice, overstep the constitutional limitation to our power, no matter
howsoever desirable the departure might be.”); Lanier v. State, 57 Miss. 102, 107 (1879)
(“The doctrine of stare decisis in criminal cases cannot be carried to the extent of allowing
to violators of law a vested interest in rules which have been erroneously sanctioned.”);
State v. Williams, 13 S.C. 546, 560 (1880) (overruling precedent limiting the criminal
jurisdiction of general sessions court and affirming conviction on that basis); see also
Robert Hill Freeman, The Protection Afforded Against the Retroactive Operation of an
Overruling Decision, 18 Colum. L. Rev. 230, 239 (1918) (noting that “strict and logical
adherence” to the Blackstonian view “led many courts to refuse to circumvent in any way
the retroactive effect of an overruling decision”). At that time, there was only one well-
established exception to the general rule of retroactivity: courts would refuse to apply an
overruling decision retroactively when that decision involved the interpretation of
constitutional or statutory law and would impair vested contract rights. See, e.g., von
Moschzisker, supra, at 422.

        In the early twentieth century, state courts began to deviate from the traditional rule
of retroactivity more frequently. See State v. O’Neil, 126 N.W. 454, 454–57 (Iowa 1910);
State v. Fulton, 63 S.E. 145, 147–48 (N.C. 1908); State v. Bell, 49 S.E. 163, 164–65 (N.C.
1904).3 “These early cases, both civil and criminal, involving both common-law rules and
statutory interpretations, made much of the extreme and singular plight of the parties who
had reason to rely on the earlier, overruled decision.” Beryl Harold Levy, Realist

        3
          For a time, the United States Supreme Court also departed from the traditional rule of retroactivity
and embraced the practice of prospective decisionmaking. In criminal cases, the Supreme Court adopted a
three-part test to determine whether a newly announced constitutional rule should have retroactive effect.
See Desist v. United States, 394 U.S. 244, 249 (1969). A similar test was adopted for civil cases as well.
See Chevron Oil Co. v. Huson, 404 U.S. 97, 106–07 (1971). In application, both of these tests “created
confusion and inconsistent results.” Garner et al., supra, at 312. The Supreme Court eventually changed
course, returning to the general rule of retroactivity in both criminal and civil cases. See Griffith v. Kentucky,
479 U.S. 314, 322 (1987) (holding that “failure to apply a newly declared constitutional rule to criminal
cases pending on direct review violates basic norms of constitutional adjudication”); Harper, 509 U.S. at
97–98 (holding that newly announced decisions “must be given full retroactive effect” unless the Court
explicitly “reserve[s] the question” of retroactivity) (quoting James B. Beam Distilling Co. v. Georgia, 501
U.S. 529, 539 (1991))).
                                                        4
Jurisprudence and Prospective Overruling, 109 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1, 8–9 (1960). Yet they did
not adopt prospective overruling as a “general and consistent judicial practice.” Id. at 9.

       As the trend of prospective overruling continued, the question soon arose whether
the federal Constitution requires state courts to apply their decisions retroactively. The
United States Supreme Court considered this question in 1932 and held that “the Federal
Constitution has no voice upon the subject.” Great Northern Ry. Co. v. Sunburst Oil &
Refin. Co., 287 U.S. 358, 364 (1932). “[I]n defining the limits of adherence to precedent,”
the Court explained, a State “may make a choice for itself between the principle of forward
operation and that of relation backward.” Id. That choice is to be determined “by the juristic
philosophy of the judges [of the State’s] courts, their conceptions of law, its origin and
nature.” Id. at 365.

        The United States Supreme Court has identified only one situation in which a court
must decline to apply its decision retroactively: when retroactive application would violate
the Due Process Clause. See, e.g., Rogers v. Tennessee, 532 U.S. 451, 462 (2001). A
judicial decision that alters “a common law doctrine of criminal law violates the principle
of fair warning, and hence must not be given retroactive effect, only where it is ‘unexpected
and indefensible by reference to the law which had been expressed prior to the conduct in
issue.’” Id. (quoting Bouie v. City of Columbia, 378 U.S. 347, 354 (1964)).

        Rogers arose from the Tennessee Supreme Court’s abrogation of the common-law
year-and-a-day rule, which provided that “no defendant could be convicted of murder
unless his victim had died by the defendant’s act within a year and a day of the act.” Id. at
453. The United States Supreme Court held that our Court could apply that decision
retroactively, without violating the Due Process Clause, because the rule “ha[d] been
legislatively or judicially abolished in the vast majority of jurisdictions recently to have
addressed the issue” and “had only the most tenuous foothold as part of the criminal law
of the State of Tennessee.” Id. at 463–64.

        Rogers made clear that constitutional limits on retroactive judicial decisions are
grounded in the “core due process concepts of notice, foreseeability, and, in particular, the
right to fair warning,” and not in the federal Ex Post Facto Clause. Id. at 459. The Court
reaffirmed that “[t]he Ex Post Facto Clause, by its own terms, does not apply to courts”
and cautioned that “[e]xtending the Clause to courts through the rubric of due process”
would “circumvent the clear constitutional text” and “evince too little regard for the
important institutional and contextual differences between legislating, on the one hand, and
common law decisionmaking, on the other.” Id. at 460 (emphasis omitted).

       Justice Scalia dissented in Rogers. In his view, the Tennessee Supreme Court had
acted as a legislature in abolishing the year-and-a-day rule and thus should be held to the
same standard. See id. at 476–78 (Scalia, J., dissenting). He pointed out that our Court
“made no pretense that the year-and-a-day rule was ‘bad’ law from the outset” but instead

                                              5
asserted that “the need for the rule, as a means of assuring causality of the death, had
disappeared with time.” Id. at 477. That sort of change, Justice Scalia explained, was “a
matter for the legislature, beyond the power of the court.” Id. But even under Justice
Scalia’s conception of due process limits on retroactive judicial decisions, a court “would
remain free to conclude that a prior decision or series of decisions . . . was in error, and to
apply that conclusion retroactively” so long as fair-notice requirements are satisfied. Id. at
481.

        Following Sunburst, state courts adopted varying tests and standards for
determining whether a decision should apply retroactively. Some courts viewed due
process restrictions as a floor and identified other circumstances in which a court should
decline to apply a decision retroactively. Many of those courts “settled on some variation”
of the three-factor test first formulated by the United States Supreme Court in Chevron Oil
Co. v. Huson, 404 U.S. 97, 106–07 (1971). See Richard S. Kay, Retroactivity and
Prospectivity of Judgments in American Law, 62 Am. J. Compar. L. 37, 42 & n.25 (2014).
That test considers whether the decision “establish[es] a new principle of law,” whether
retroactive application will further the operation of the new rule, and whether and to what
degree retroactive application would be inequitable. Chevron Oil, 404 U.S. at 106–07.

        Other courts, however, decided to treat due process limits as both a floor and a
ceiling and have applied decisions retroactively unless doing so would violate the Due
Process Clause. See, e.g., State v. Redmond, 631 N.W.2d 501, 508 (Neb. 2001) (holding
that retroactive application of decision satisfies the Due Process Clause and declining to
consider Ex Post Facto principles); Miller v. State, 457 S.W.3d 919, 927–29 (Tex. Crim.
App. 2015) (applying decision retroactively after determining that it does not violate the
Due Process Clause); Armstrong v. State, 848 N.E.2d 1088, 1092–95 (Ind. 2006) (same).

        As Rogers illustrates, and as explained more fully below, Tennessee generally has
followed the latter approach until today. And for good reason. If state courts are to make a
choice between retroactive and prospective application based on their “conceptions of law,
its origin and nature,” Sunburst, 287 U.S. at 365, the better path is to follow the traditional
rule of retroactivity. That rule reflects a correct understanding of the judicial role—to say
what the law is, rather than what it should be—and preserves the important distinction
between the judicial and legislative branches. Any other approach would unsettle these
bedrock principles.

                                              B.

       The majority’s decision to apply its abrogation holding only prospectively perhaps
could be justified if our precedents required that result. But they do nothing of the sort. To
the contrary, we have consistently given retroactive effect to decisions overruling criminal-
law precedents even when those decisions disadvantaged the defendant.

                                              6
        In State v. Collier, this Court partially abrogated the exact same accomplice-
corroboration rule that is at issue here by holding that “the testimony of a victim of statutory
rape does not require corroboration.” 411 S.W.3d 886, 888 (Tenn. 2013).4 The defendant
in that case relied on the corroboration rule to argue that the evidence was insufficient to
support his conviction. Id. at 893. At the time, Tennessee “remained among a small
minority of jurisdictions that ha[d] adhered to the rule classifying a victim of a statutory
rape as an accomplice and requiring corroborative evidence.” Id. at 894. We overruled
those decisions, rejected the defendant’s sufficiency-of-the-evidence challenge on that
basis, and affirmed his conviction. Id. at 898–900 (“[H]aving determined that no
corroboration of the victim’s testimony is required, we conclude that the evidence
presented at trial was sufficient for a rational trier of fact to find the essential elements of
aggravated statutory rape beyond a reasonable doubt.”). Collier implicated precisely the
same fairness and reliance concerns that the majority and separate opinions fixate on today,
yet we had no problem applying our holding retroactively in that case. It is hard to see why
the case currently before us should be treated any differently.

       Collier was no aberration. In State v. Dorantes, we overruled earlier precedents that
required the State to satisfy a higher evidentiary threshold when relying on circumstantial
evidence. 331 S.W.3d 370, 379–81 (Tenn. 2011). We instead decided to follow the federal
rule that “direct and circumstantial evidence should be treated the same when weighing the
sufficiency of such evidence.” Id. at 381. Despite acknowledging that application of the
newly announced standard “could result in a different outcome” in that case, we applied
our holding retroactively and concluded that “the evidence, even though entirely
circumstantial, [was] sufficient to support the jury’s finding of guilt beyond a reasonable
doubt.” Id. at 381, 389–90.

       We followed the same course in State v. Rogers when we abolished the year-and-a-
day rule. 992 S.W.2d 393 (Tenn. 1999). Notwithstanding that application of the rule would
have protected the defendant from homicide charges, we applied our holding retroactively
and affirmed the defendant’s conviction for second-degree murder. Id. at 402–03. Our only
inquiry with respect to retroactivity was whether retroactive application would violate the
due process provisions of the federal and state constitutions. After concluding that it would
not, we “appl[ied] our decision abolishing the rule retroactively to the facts of th[at] case”
        4
          The majority asserts that the Court abrogated only “an exception to the accomplice-corroboration
rule, not a part of the rule itself.” That characterization is misleading. The rule we abrogated in Collier
required corroboration for the testimony of a minor victim of statutory rape and was part of the accomplice-
corroboration rule as it had developed in Tennessee. We referred to that rule as an exception in Collier only
because it was a deviation from our usual test for determining who should be considered an accomplice
under the accomplice-corroboration rule. See 411 S.W.3d at 895–96 (explaining that the rule emerging
from our previous cases was that “a minor, even though legally incapable of being charged with a sex crime
because of his or her age, may nevertheless qualify as an accomplice whose uncorroborated testimony
cannot support a conviction”). Our abrogation of the rule at issue in Collier disadvantaged the defendant in
the same manner as our decision here, by eliminating the requirement that a witness’s testimony be
corroborated.
                                                     7
without considering other factors such as general fairness principles or reliance interests.
Id. at 402.

        Our strong preference for retroactivity is evident in earlier cases, too. In State v.
Matthews, we considered the interpretation of a statute allowing a defendant charged with
embezzlement of public funds to avoid prosecution by tendering the funds to their rightful
owner. 226 S.W. 203, 205–06 (Tenn. 1920) (citing Shannon’s Code § 6575). Earlier
precedents had misconstrued that provision as applying to defendants charged with
embezzlement of private funds. The defendant in Matthews, who was charged with
embezzlement of private funds, raised tender as a defense, and the trial court discharged
him from prosecution. Id. at 205. We overruled our earlier precedents, clarified that the
statute at issue applied only to embezzlement of public funds, and reversed the trial court’s
judgment. Id. at 207. In doing so, we cited approvingly to the Mississippi Supreme Court’s
statement in Lanier that “the doctrine of stare decisis in criminal cases cannot be carried to
the extent of allowing violators of the law a vested interest in rules which have been
erroneously sanctioned.” Id. at 206–07 (citing Lanier, 57 Miss. at 107).

         My research identified only one criminal case in which we declined to apply a new
decision retroactively. In Sommerville v. State, the Court held for the first time that, in a
retrial, “a juror with knowledge of the verdict and sentence of the prior jury shall be subject
to challenge for cause, unless the examination shows, unequivocally, that he can be
impartial,” and we prescribed certain procedures for conducting the examination. 521
S.W.2d 792, 797 (Tenn. 1975). Although we held that these rules “shall be given
prospective application only,” we ultimately granted relief to the defendant in that case—
who received a harsher sentence after a second trial from a jury with knowledge of his prior
sentence—by remanding to the trial court for entry of a judgment “pronouncing the same
sentence as the first jury.” Id. at 797–98. It appears, then, that we declined to apply the for-
cause challenge holding retroactively only because an alternative remedy existed that
would not require a new trial. This unique situation is not implicated here.

       To be sure, these precedents do not expressly forbid this Court from applying an
overruling decision prospectively. But they reflect a longstanding and unbroken practice
of retroactive application in situations similar to the one presented here.5 I would follow

        5
          We have adopted a slightly different approach in civil cases: “In civil cases retrospective
application of a decision overruling an earlier decision ordinarily is denied only if such an application would
work a hardship upon those who have justifiably relied upon the old precedent.” Calaway ex rel. Calaway
v. Shucker, 193 S.W.3d 509, 518 (Tenn. 2005) (quoting Marshall v. Marshall, 670 S.W.2d 213, 215 (Tenn.
1984)). Even under that standard, a “rigorous” showing is required to obtain prospective application, and
there “should be few occasions when prospective overruling can justifiably displace the normal retroactive
application of the overruling decision.” Marshall, 670 S.W.2d at 215 (quoting Roger J. Traynor, Quo Vadis,
Prospective Overruling: A Question of Judicial Responsibility, 28 Hastings L.J. 533, 561–62 (1977)).

                                                      8
our precedents and apply our holding abrogating the accomplice-corroboration rule
retroactively in this case and others in the pipeline.

       As explained above, the general rule of retroactivity must give way when retroactive
application of an overruling decision would violate the Due Process Clause. But Turner
has not raised a due process objection. And neither the majority opinion nor Justice Lee’s
separate opinion contends that retroactive application is constitutionally forbidden here.
That is not surprising, because any due process challenge almost certainly would fail under
the standard set out in Rogers. The accomplice-corroboration rule marked a departure from
the common law of England and has been widely rejected by both courts and legislatures.
Abolition of the rule thus cannot be said “to be unexpected and indefensible by reference
to the law as it then existed.” Rogers, 532 U.S. at 464 (noting that “the fact that a vast
number of jurisdictions have abolished a rule . . . is surely relevant to” this inquiry).

       Even if more general concerns about fairness or reliance interests were relevant to
the retroactivity analysis, they would not tip the balance. Turner has not relied on the
accomplice-corroboration rule to guide her primary conduct or order her daily affairs. See
Thomas S. Currier, Time and Change in Judge-Made Law: Prospective Overruling, 51 Va.
L. Rev. 201, 254 (1965) (noting that criminal law “is not an area where people are apt to
have acted in reliance on perceived law”). The only conceivable way in which Turner might
have relied on the rule is to develop her litigation strategy. But the exact same reliance
interest was implicated by our decisions in Collier, Dorantes, Rogers, and Matthews and
we still adhered to the traditional rule of retroactivity in those cases.6

       Rather than look to our own precedents regarding retroactive application of
overruling decisions, the majority relies primarily on the reasoning of Maryland’s high
court in State v. Jones. That reliance is misplaced. Unlike Tennessee, Maryland has long
required prospective-only application in criminal cases whenever a newly announced
decision benefits the State. See Jones, 216 A.3d at 923. Also unlike Tennessee, Maryland
considers general Ex Post Facto principles in its analysis notwithstanding that the Ex Post
Facto Clause does not apply to judicial decisions. Id. at 921. We have never adopted an
approach resembling the one that Maryland employs, and we should not do so now.

                                                    C.

       Unfortunately, it is not entirely clear what approach the majority adopts today. The
majority opinion does not articulate any test to govern the retroactivity inquiry in future
cases. It instead seems to endorse an amorphous inquiry that considers only whether
        6
           The majority argues that Dorantes and Rogers are distinguishable because they involved rules
that were not frequently applied or whose application rarely affected the outcome of the case. The problem
with that argument is that application of the rules would have been outcome-dispositive in those cases, and
we still applied our overruling decisions retroactively.

                                                    9
retroactive application would further “the interest of fairness.” This approach does little to
constrain the Court’s discretion in future cases and effectively means that the longstanding
rule of retroactivity may be discarded whenever a majority of this Court wants.

        This prospect should concern anyone who cares about stare decisis. Under the
traditional rule of retroactivity, judges must carefully consider whether an overruling
decision will upset reliance interests or result in unfairness or prejudice because those
results cannot be avoided by declaring that a holding will apply only prospectively. In this
sense, the rule of retroactivity puts a thumb on the scale in favor of adherence to precedent.
See Note, The Effect of Overruled and Overruling Decisions on Intervening Transactions,
47 Harv. L. Rev. 1403, 1412 (1934) (recognizing that retroactivity acts as “an automatic
check upon overruling”). Purely prospective decisionmaking, by contrast, “tends to cut
[courts] loose from the force of precedent . . . and thereby mitigate[s] the practical force of
stare decisis.” Williams v. United States, 401 U.S. 667, 680 (1971) (Harlan, J., concurring);
see also Harper, 509 U.S. at 105 (Scalia, J., concurring) (“Prospective decisionmaking is
the handmaid of judicial activism, and the born enemy of stare decisis.”). The majority’s
decision to prospectively overrule the accomplice-corroboration rule sets a dangerous
precedent that could ultimately weaken the force of stare decisis.

                                       *      *       *

       It may seem harmless occasionally to depart from the traditional rule of retroactivity
to achieve “fairness” in a particular case, but there are other important principles at stake.
I would apply our decision overruling the accomplice-corroboration rule retroactively
because that approach is consistent with the historical role of the judiciary, faithfully
adheres to our precedents, and constrains judicial discretion. To the extent fairness
concerns exist, they are better addressed as part of the due process analysis that applies to
retroactive judicial decisionmaking. I therefore respectfully dissent from the majority’s
retroactivity analysis, its conclusion that the decision abrogating the accomplice-
corroboration rule should apply only prospectively, and the judgment reversing Turner’s
conviction.

                                                          _____________________________
                                                          SARAH K. CAMPBELL, JUSTICE

                                              10