The Oyez Project: Criminal Procedure Issues - Retroactivity

Adams v. Illinois

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Angelet v. Fay

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Austria v. Altmann

Maria Altmann learned that the valuable artwork owned by her uncle had been either seized by the Nazi's or taken by Austria after World War II. She sued in American federal court to recover six paintings from the Austrian Gallery. She filed the suit under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 (FSIA), which allows suits against foreign nations in cases involving "rights to property taken in violation of international law." Austria, however, claimed that the FSIA did not apply in this case because the paintings were taken in the 1940s, when the United States embraced a different - and more extensive - idea of immunity that would have barred the suit. Because the Act did not explicitly state that it applied retroactively (that is, to actions taken before it was passed) Austria claimed that it was entitled to this broader definition of immunity.

The district court sided with Altmann, holding that the FSIA applied retroactively. A Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals panel affirmed.

Beard v. Banks

In 1982, George Banks was sentenced to death in Pennsylvania for the murder of 13 people. After the Pennsylvania Supreme Court upheld the conviction, Banks unsuccessfully sought a writ of habeas corpus in federal district court. Reversing the district court, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals found Banks's death sentence unconstitutional. The court held that jury instructions during sentencing led jurors to believe they could not vote against the death penalty unless they all agreed on mitigating evidence (that is, evidence that would have inclined them to vote against the death penalty). This, the court reasoned, violated the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Mills v. Maryland (1988). The U.S. Supreme Court reversed the decision (in part) and remanded it. Pointing to its opinion in Teague v. Lane (1989) and the fact that Mills was decided after Banks's conviction, the Court reasoned that the appeals court did not consider whether Mills could be "retroactively" applied. The Third Circuit Court - reviewing its ruling - did not change its original opinion. It found that "Mills did not announce a new rule of constitutional law for retroactivity purposes" and that Banks's death sentence was unconstitutional.

Bowen v. United States

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Brown v. Louisiana

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Debacker v. Brainard

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Desist v. United States

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Gosa v. Mayden

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Griffith v. Kentucky

This case concerned the retrospective application of judge-made rules. Specifically, the Court had to decide whether a prosecutor's use of peremptory challenges to exclude black jurors, combined with his call to the jury clerk, violated the black petitioner's right to an impartial jury. The Court was called upon to decide whether the previous decision in Batson v. Kentucky was applicable to pending litigation but not final when Batson was decided. This case was decided together with Brown v. United States.

Hankerson v. North Carolina

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Hill v. California

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Jenkins v. Delaware

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Johnson v. New Jersey

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Kaiser v. New York

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Linkletter v. Walker

Victor Linkletter was convicted in state court on evidence illegally obtained by police prior to the Supreme Court decision concerning the Fourth Amendment in Mapp v. Ohio. Mapp applied the exclusionary rule to state criminal proceedings, denying the use of illegally obtained evidence at trial. Linkletter argued for a retrial based on the Mapp decision.

Mackey v. United States

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O'Dell v. Netherland

At the penalty phase of Joseph Roger O'Dell's state trial on capital murder, rape, and sodomy charges, the government presented evidence that he had been convicted of numerous other offenses. The court, subsequently, denied O'Dell's request for a jury instruction that he was ineligible for parole if sentenced to life in prison. After the jury determined that O'Dell presented a future danger, he was sentenced to death. The District Court, in granting O'Dell habeas relief, found that the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Simmons v. South Carolina, 512 U.S. 154, which requires that a capital defendant be permitted to inform his sentencing jury that he is parole-ineligible if the prosecution argues his future dangerousness, was not a "new rule" and, thus, entitled O'Dell to resentencing.

Powell v. Nevada

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Robinson v. Neil

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Schriro v. Summerlin

Warren Summerlin killed a loan collector with a hatchet in 1982 and was subsequently convicted of murder. He was sentenced to death by a state trial judge because of the heinous nature of the crime and his previous criminal history. He appealed the sentence, arguing that his attorney's romantic relationship with the prosecutor and the trial judge's proven use of marijuana had prevented him from receiving a fair trial, but the Arizona state courts rejected his appeals.

In June 2002, however, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in Ring v. Arizona. The decision found that the Sixth Amendment right to jury trial meant that only juries, not judges, could sentence someone to death. The Ring decision gave Summerlin new hope. He appealed his conviction, arguing that the decision changed the substance of the law rather than just the procedure used to apply it, and that it should therefore be applied retroactively. The state countered that the change dealt only with who did the actual sentencing, not with the burden of proof, and was therefore only procedural. Because procedural changes are not applied retroactively under the Supreme Court's 1989 decision in Teague v. Lane, the state argued that Summerlin's sentence should be upheld. A divided Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed, siding instead with Summerlin and ordering the state to reopen his trial for re-sentencing.

Shea v. Louisiana

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Solem v. Stumes

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Tehan v. Shott

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United States v. Johnson

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United States v. Peltier

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United States v. U.S. Coin & Currency

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Williams v. United States

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Yates v. Aiken

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