{"id":17157,"date":"2012-04-30T15:37:56","date_gmt":"2012-04-30T20:37:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=17157"},"modified":"2012-04-30T15:37:56","modified_gmt":"2012-04-30T20:37:56","slug":"scotus-to-decide-on-padilla-retroactivity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2012\/04\/scotus-to-decide-on-padilla-retroactivity\/","title":{"rendered":"SCOTUS to Decide on Padilla Retroactivity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier today, the Supreme Court granted cert. in Chaidez v. United States<\/em>, 655 F.3d 684 (7th Cir. 2011). Chaidez<\/em> held that the Court\u2019s decision in Padilla v. Kentucky<\/em>, 130 S. Ct. 1473 (2010), would not be applied retroactively to defendants whose convictions were already final when Padilla<\/em> came out. In Padilla<\/em>, the Court held that a lawyer performs below minimal constitutional standards when he or she fails to advise a client of the deportation risks of a guilty plea. Now, the Court itself will have an opportunity to determine whether its decision should have retroactive effect.<\/p>\n

The majority and dissenting judges in Chaidez<\/em> all agreed that the case turned on whether Padilla<\/em> announced a new rule of criminal procedure, within the meaning of Teague v. Lane<\/em>, 489 U.S. 288 (1989). With only a couple of execeptions not relevant here, Teague<\/em> prohibits retroactivity for new rules. So, the question in Chaidez<\/em> seems to boil down to whether Padilla<\/em> announced a new rule or merely applied the basic ineffective assistance test of Strickland v. Washington<\/em>, 466 U.S. 668 (1984).<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

From the majority\u2019s perspective, it was decisive that Padilla<\/em> produced a concurring and a dissenting opinion, both of which were supported by two justices and both of which expressed the view that Padilla<\/em> constituted a \u201cdramatic departure from precedent.\u201d That four justices saw Padilla<\/em> as not mandated by precedent provided strong evidence that it announced a new rule. Additional evidence to this effect came from the great weight of pre-Padilla<\/em> lower-court precedent, which recognized an exception to Strickland<\/em> for failures to advise regarding collateral consequences of convictions.<\/p>\n

Judge Williams, in dissent, emphasized the flexible, open-ended nature of the basic Strickland<\/em> test: \u201c[W]here the starting point is a rule of general application such as Strickland, it will be the infrequent case that yields a result so novel that it forges a new rule, one not dictated by precedent.\u201d 655 F.3d at 695 (quoting Wright v. West<\/em>, 505 U.S. 277 (1992) (Kennedy, J., concurring)).<\/p>\n

It will be interesting to see whether the Supreme Court endorses Williams\u2019 approach. It would seemingly minimize the effectiveness of the Teague<\/em> bar in Strickland<\/em> cases, and perhaps in many other sorts of cases in which constitutional rights are defined by reference to broadly worded standards (e.g., Brady<\/em> materiality decisions or determinations of whether a person was \u201din custody\u201d for Miranda<\/em> purposes.) Read for all its worth, the Williams approach might eliminate the Teague<\/em> bar for any precedent that did not expressly overturn an otherwise-controlling decision.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019m not so sure that limiting the effectiveness of Teague<\/em> would be such a bad thing. What really motivated the Teague<\/em> plurality to adopt the retroactivity bar was a desire for greater finality in criminal litigation, particularly when it comes to federal habeas courts reviewing the judgments of state courts.<\/p>\n

Since Teague<\/em>, however, Congress has erected a host of new statutory obstacles that federal courts must overcome before upsetting state-court judgments. Particularly noteworthy is 28 U.S.C. \u00a7 2254(d), which largely codifies the Teague<\/em> rule for habeas petitions attacking state-court convictions. Also relevant are the new one-year statute of limitations for habeas petitions and new restrictions on filing multiple habeas petitions. Finally, procedural default rules that antedate Teague<\/em> also impose important constraints on the ability of defendants to challenge longstanding convictions based on favorable new precedent. Against this backdrop, Teague<\/em> has largely outlived its usefulness.<\/p>\n

In practice, adopting a more relaxed approach to Teague<\/em> would likely only benefit a very small number of defendants, most or all of whom would be individuals (like Chaidez herself) challenging federal convictions\u2013convictions whose finality does not implicate the federalism considerations that seem to have animated Teague<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Cross posted at Seventh Circuit Updates<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Earlier today, the Supreme Court granted cert. in Chaidez v. United States, 655 F.3d 684 (7th Cir. 2011). Chaidez held that the Court\u2019s decision in Padilla v. Kentucky, 130 S. Ct. 1473 (2010), would not be applied retroactively to defendants whose convictions were already final when Padilla came out. In Padilla, the Court held that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,28,122,23,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-criminal-justice","category-criminal-law-process","category-public","category-seventh-circuit","category-us-supreme-court","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17157\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}