Court Authority – Retroactive Application

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US Supreme Court

Case Name: Montgomery v. Louisiana

Case No.: 14-280

Practice Area: Court Authority – Retroactive Application

Supreme Court has jurisdiction to make determination whether Louisiana Supreme Court properly refused to give retroactive effect to Miller v. Alabama.

“When a new substantive rule of constitutional law controls the outcome of a case, the Constitution requires state collateral review courts to give retroactive effect to that rule. This conclusion is established by precedents addressing the nature of substantive rules, their differences from procedural rules, and their history of retroactive application. As Teague, supra, at 292, 312, and Penry, supra, at 330, indicate, substantive rules set forth categorical constitutional guarantees that place certain criminal laws and punishments altogether beyond the State’s power to impose. It follows that when a State enforces a proscription or penalty barred by the Constitution, the resulting conviction or sentence is, by definition, unlawful. In contrast, where procedural error has infected a trial, a conviction or sentence may still be accurate and the defendant’s continued confinement may still be lawful, see Schriro v. Summerlin, 542 U. S. 348, 352–353; for this reason, a trial conducted under a procedure found unconstitutional in a later case does not automatically invalidate a defendant’s conviction or sentence. The same possibility of a valid result does not exist where a substantive rule has eliminated a State’s power to proscribe the defendant’s conduct or impose a given punishment. See United States v. United States Coin & Currency, 401 U. S. 715, 724. By holding that new substantive rules are, indeed, retroactive, Teague continued a long tradition of recognizing that substantive rules must have retroactive effect regardless of when the defendant’s conviction became final; for a conviction under an unconstitutional law “is not merely erroneous, but is illegal and void, and cannot be a legal cause of imprisonment,” Ex parte Siebold, 100 U. S. 371, 376–377. The same logic governs a challenge to a punishment that the Constitution deprives States of authority to impose, Penry, supra, at 330. It follows that a court has no authority to leave in place a conviction or sentence that violates a substantive rule, regardless of whether the conviction or sentence became final before the rule was announced. This Court’s precedents may not directly control the question here, but they bear on the necessary analysis, for a State that may not constitutionally insist that a prisoner remain in jail on federal habeas review may not constitutionally insist on the same result in its own postconviction proceedings. Pp. 8–14.”

Judgment Reversed and Remanded

Dissent: Justice Scalia, Justice Thomas, Justice Alito

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Attorney Derek A. Hawkins is the managing partner at Hawkins Law Offices LLC, where he heads up the firm’s startup law practice. He specializes in business formation, corporate governance, intellectual property protection, private equity and venture capital funding and mergers & acquisitions. Check out the website at www.hawkins-lawoffices.com or contact them at 262-737-8825.