Public Defense

Danforth issued; states free to retroactively remedy violations

By Gideon

SCOTUS issued its much-awaited (by me, atleast) decision in Danforth v. Minnesota [pdf] today, ruling 7-2 that Teague’s retroactivity prohibition applied to Federal courts on federal habeas corpus review. State courts are hence free to apply decisions articulating violations to cases on direct and/or collateral review.

As Justice Stevens makes clear, what the Court does, in say Crawford, for example, is state that a particular act or omission violates the Constitution. It is then left to the states to decide how to remedy that violation.

Neither Linkletter nor Teague explicitly or implicitly constrained the authority of the States to provide remedies for a broader range of constitutional violations than are redressable on federal habeas.

…

Our subsequent cases, which characterize the Teague rule as a standard limiting only the scope of federal habeas relief, confirm that Teague speaks only to the context of federal habeas.

He wraps it up very succinctly:

A decision by this Court that a new rule does not apply retroactively under Teague does not imply that there was no right and thus no violation of that right at the time of trial?only that no remedy will be provided in federal habeas courts.

Whatever this means for federal habeas corpus practice, it is pretty clear that us state practitioners can now argue - with a stamp of approval - that our state courts should provide remedies for constitutional violations recently articulated.

It makes much sense, too, if you think about it in the context of the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments applied to the states through the Fourteenth. The Court has maintained that States are free to provide greater protections than afforded by the Federal Constitution. This falls in line with that quite well.

Read the whole decision - it’s very interesting. Justice Stevens conducts an in-depth analysis of Justice O’Connor’s plurality in Teague and cites Justice Scalia heavily. Then there’s this odd footnote; perhaps someone can explain:

13. That same year, we similarly denied retroactive effect to the rule announced in Griffin v. California, 380 U. S. 609 (1965), prohibiting prosecutorial comment on the defendant?s failure to testify. See Tehan v. United States ex rel. Shott, 382 U. S. 406 (1966). Shortly thereafter, in a case involving a Griffin error, we held for the first time that there are some constitutional errors that do not require the automatic reversal of a conviction. Chapman v. California, 386 U. S. 18, 22 (1967). Both Shott and Chapman protected the State of California from a potentially massive exodus of state prisoners because their prosecutors and judges had routinely commented on a defendant?s failure to testify.

A much better in-depth analysis from Scotusblog here. More from SL & P.

H/T: SL & P.

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Full post as published by A Public Defender on February 20, 2008 (boomark / email).