Opinion · Supreme Court of the United States

Truesdale v. Aiken

Truesdale v. Aiken, 480 U.S. 527 (1987)

Type
Opinion
Court
Supreme Court of the United States
Jurisdiction
Federal
Date
1987-03-23
Topic
labor-and-employment

How later courts describe this case

  • applying Skipper to all convictions not final or on post-conviction relief at the time the decision was filed

Citator

UpLaw has not yet analyzed Truesdale v. Aiken. The absence of a flag is not a finding that it is good law.

Authority status
pending
Cited by
21 opinions

Headnotes

  1. Criminal Law & Procedure — Retroactivity New constitutional rules of criminal procedure are to be applied retroactively to all criminal cases, including those on direct review, that were not yet final when the new rule was announced.
  2. Criminal Law & Procedure — Retroactivity Where a decision of the Supreme Court merely applies settled precedents to a new and different factual situation, no question of retroactivity arises, because the later decision has not altered the governing rule in any material way.
  3. Constitutional Law — Retroactivity on Federal Habeas Corpus Under Justice Harlan's analysis in Mackey, a court adjudicating a federal habeas corpus petition should generally apply the law prevailing at the time the conviction became final rather than dispose of the case on the basis of intervening changes in constitutional interpretation, subject only to exceptions for decisions placing certain primary, private individual conduct beyond the power of the criminal lawmaking authority and for claims of nonobservance of procedures implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.
  4. Constitutional Law — Evidence at Capital Sentencing The Eighth Amendment prohibits States from excluding from the sentencing phase of a capital trial relevant evidence that tends to lessen the defendant's culpability.
  5. Constitutional Law — Evidence at Capital Sentencing A capital defendant is not entitled to introduce at sentencing, under the Eighth Amendment, evidence that is wholly unrelated to his culpability but is relevant only to his probable future conduct as a prisoner.
  6. Habeas Corpus — Retroactivity in State Postconviction Proceedings The Supreme Court has not determined whether the same retroactivity rules that govern federal habeas proceedings also apply to state postconviction proceedings, and a substantial argument may be made that the federal rule, whatever it may become, does not require state courts considering such petitions to apply constitutional developments occurring after the conviction became final.
TRUESDALEv. AIKEN,480 U.S. 527(1987)
TRUESDALEv. AIKEN, WARDEN, ET AL.
ON PETITION FOR WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE SUPREME COURT OF SOUTH CAROLINA
No. 86-5530.
Decided March 23, 1987
Certiorari granted. Reversed.
PER CURIAM.
The motion of petitioner for leave to proceedin forma pauperisand the petition for a writ of certiorari are granted. The judgment of the Supreme Court of South Carolina is reversed.Lockettv.Ohio,438 U.S. 586(1978);Skipperv.South Carolina,476 U.S. 1(1986). See alsoUnited Statesv.Johnson,457 U.S. 537,549(1982).It is so ordered.
JUSTICE POWELL, with whom THE CHIEF JUSTICE and JUSTICE O'CONNOR join, dissenting.
Today the Court grants certiorari and summarily reverses a decision of the South Carolina Supreme Court that had refused to applySkipperv.South Carolina,476 U.S. 1(1986), retroactively to cases that were final at the timeSkipperwas decided. I continue to believe that the appropriate test for applying this Court's criminal law decisions retroactively to federal habeas corpus petitions is the analysis set forth by Justice Harlan inMackeyv.United States,401 U.S. 667,681-695(1971) (opinion concurring in judgment inMackeyand dissenting from judgment inWilliamsv.United States,401 U.S. 646(1971)). SeeGriffithv.Kentucky,479 U.S. 314,328-329(1987) (POWELL, J., concurring). InMackey, Justice Harlan argued that "it is sounder, in adjudicating habeas petitions, generally to apply the law prevailing at the time a conviction became final than it is to seek to dispose ofPage 528all these cases on the basis of intervening changes in constitutional interpretation."401 U.S., at 689.1

Application of these principles to this case is not simple.Lockettv.Ohio,438 U.S. 586(1978), andEddingsv.Oklahoma,455 U.S. 104(1982), were decided before petitioner's conviction became final. Accordingly, under the retroactivity principles adopted in our recent decision inGriffithv.Kentucky, supra, petitioner is entitled to the benefit of those decisions. The Court appears to think thatSkipper, supra, merely applied the settled principles ofLockettandEddingsto a new fact situation, and thus that petitioner also is entitled to the benefit of the Court's decision inSkipper.2

I do not agree that petitioner is entitled to the benefit of our decision inSkipper. I continue to think that the result inSkipperwas "not required by our decisions inLockettandEddings,"Skipper, supra, at 9 (POWELL, J., concurring in judgment) (citations omitted). InLockettandEddings, the Court held that the Eighth Amendment prohibits States from excluding, at a capital-sentencing proceeding, relevant evidence that tends to lessen the defendant's culpability.Lockettv.Ohio, supra, at 604;Eddingsv.Oklahoma, supra, at 114. InSkipper, this rule was extended to require admission of evidence that was unrelated to culpability. Rather, the State was required to admit evidence relevant to the defendant'sPage 529probable future conduct as a prisoner.3Neither the author of the plurality opinion inLockettnor the author of the Court's opinion inEddingsagreed with the Court's decision inSkipper. Although I am of course bound by the Court's decision on the merits inSkipper, this is not incompatible with my view thatSkipperbroke new ground. Therefore, I do not believe this petitioner's conviction was incorrect under the law existing when the conviction became final. The South Carolina court decided this case in accord with the precedents existing at the time of petitioner's conviction.

I acknowledge that we cannot determine with certainty how the Court would have decided this case at the time petitioner was convicted.4Because of the inherent subjectivity of this determination, I do not find summary disposition of this case appropriate. Moreover, there are several questions related to this case that have not been decided by this Court's decisions. At least in the context of habeas petitions, we have not addressed the standards by which a court should determine the retroactive effect of cases likeSkipperthat arguably follow from pre-existing precedents. Nor has the Court decided whether the same retroactivity rules should apply to state postconviction proceedings that apply toPage 530federal habeas proceedings. A substantial argument could be made that this is a question of state procedural law and that — whatever the federal rule eventually may become — state courts considering such petitions need not consider developments in constitutional law that occur after the conviction became final. Of course, we should not resolve these questions without full briefing and consideration.

If these questions were properly presented, I would vote to grant the petition for a writ of certiorari. As the more important questions are not directly raised, my vote is to deny the petition. It seems to me that summary reversal is wholly inappropriate, and accordingly I dissent.Page 531
  1. Page 528 Justice Harlan identified two exceptions to this rule: cases that "place . . . certain kinds of primary, private individual conduct beyond the power of the criminal law-making authority,"401 U.S., at 692, and where there are "claims of nonobservance of those procedures that . . . are `implicit in the concept of ordered liberty,'"id., at 693 (quotingPalkov.Connecticut,302 U.S. 319,325(1937)). Neither of these exceptions is applicable to this case. ↩
  2. Page 528 The Court supports this conclusion by reference to the statement inUnited Statesv.Johnson,457 U.S. 537(1982), that "when a decision of this Court merely has applied settled precedents to new and different factual situations, no real question has arisen as to whether the later decision should apply retrospectively, . . . because the later decision has not in fact altered that rule in any material way."Id., at 549. ↩
  3. Page 529 The Court inSkipperexplained: "Consideration of a defendant's past conduct as indicative of his probable future behavior is an inevitable and not undesirable element of criminal sentencing: `any sentencing authority must predict a convicted person's probable future conduct when it engages in the process of determining what punishment to impose.'"Skipperv.South Carolina,476 U.S. 1,5(1986) (quotingJurekv.Texas,428 U.S. 262,275(1976) (joint opinion of Stewart, POWELL, and STEVENS, JJ.)). The "past conduct" to which theSkipperCourt referred was Skipper's good behaviorafterhis conviction and death sentence. ↩
  4. Page 529 I am not the first to note the difficulty of making these determinations. SeeDesistv.United States,394 U.S. 244,263-269(1969) (Harlan, J., dissenting);Mackeyv.United States,401 U.S. 667,695(1971) (opinion of Harlan, J., concurring in judgment inMackeyand dissenting from judgment inWilliamsv.United States,401 U.S. 646(1971)). ↩