Teague v. Lane
The Court adopted a new, stricter framework for when prisoners on federal habeas corpus can benefit from a constitutional rule announced after their conviction became final, holding that such new rules generally do not apply retroactively on collateral review unless they fall into one of two narrow exceptions.
Applying that framework, the Court declined to decide whether the right to an impartial jury requires the actual trial jury (not just the initial jury pool) to reflect a fair cross section of the community, because even a favorable ruling on that question would not have applied retroactively to this petitioner's already-final conviction.
“Unless they fall within an exception to the general rule, new constitutional rules of criminal procedure will not be applicable to those cases which have become final before the new rules are announced.”
States the Court's core new rule limiting retroactive application of constitutional rulings in habeas cases.
How it got here: State courts rejected the claim on direct appeal; a federal district court denied habeas relief; the Seventh Circuit, sitting en banc, affirmed, and the Supreme Court granted certiorari.
The Case in Depth
What happened
A Black man convicted by an all-white Illinois jury argued that the prosecution's use of all ten peremptory challenges to strike Black jurors violated his Sixth Amendment right to an impartial jury drawn from a fair cross section of the community, and separately that it violated equal protection under Swain v. Alabama. He raised these claims, plus a claim seeking retroactive application of the later decision in Batson v. Kentucky, in a federal habeas corpus petition after his conviction became final.
The question before the Court
Should brand-new constitutional rules about criminal trials automatically help prisoners whose convictions are already final and who are challenging them through federal habeas corpus?
The Court's answer
Partly. The Court did not decide the underlying question of whether the Sixth Amendment requires trial juries themselves (not just jury pools) to reflect a fair cross section of the community. Instead, it adopted a new framework: new constitutional rules generally cannot help prisoners whose convictions are already final, unless the rule falls into one of two narrow exceptions — protecting conduct the government can't criminalize at all, or a "watershed" procedure essential to accurate convictions.
Because the rule this prisoner wanted would not fit either exception, the Court refused to even decide if it existed, and left him without relief on that claim. On his separate discrimination claims, the Court also ruled against him: one was procedurally barred for not being raised earlier, and the other was foreclosed by an existing rule that a related decision, Batson v. Kentucky, did not apply retroactively to his case.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
The decision sharply narrowed the number of new constitutional claims state and federal prisoners can raise years after their convictions became final. Courts now ask, as a threshold matter, whether a claim would even qualify for retroactive application before reaching its merits, which has closed off many claims that previously might have been heard on federal habeas corpus.
What changes now
The ruling did not restore this prisoner's conviction to further litigation; the Seventh Circuit's judgment against him stands. Going forward, federal courts applying habeas corpus to state and federal prisoners must first ask whether a claimed new constitutional rule would fall within one of the two narrow exceptions before deciding it on the merits, a framework that continued to shape which claims prisoners could bring in habeas cases after this decision.
What this does not decide
The Court explicitly left open whether the Sixth Amendment's fair-cross-section requirement extends to the actual trial jury (as opposed to just the pool from which jurors are drawn), and it did not decide whether its new retroactivity framework applies the same way in death-penalty cases or to federal (as opposed to state) prisoners.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence in part — Justice White
Justice White joined the portions of the opinion resolving the Batson and Swain claims but wrote separately on retroactivity, explaining that although he still believed the Court's older Stovall three-factor test was sounder, he accepted the new approach because the Court had already committed to treating direct and collateral review differently in prior cases he had unsuccessfully dissented from.
Concurrence in part — Justice Blackmun
Justice Blackmun joined only Part I of Justice Stevens' opinion, agreeing that the Sixth Amendment claim had merit but that the Swain-based equal protection claim should fail on other grounds, concurring in the judgment overall.
Concurrence in part — Justice Stevens
Justice Stevens agreed the petitioner had a meritorious Sixth Amendment claim and would have decided that question on the merits before considering retroactivity, criticizing the plurality for deciding retroactivity first without ever determining whether a new rule existed. He also objected to the plurality's narrowing of Justice Harlan's fundamental-fairness exception, but ultimately concurred in the judgment because a prior decision (Allen v. Hardy) foreclosed relief regardless.
Dissent — Justice Brennan
“Because I cannot acquiesce in this unprecedented curtailment of the reach of the Great Writ, particularly in the absence of any discussion of these momentous changes by the parties or the lower courts, I dissent.”Explains the dissent's core objection to narrowing habeas corpus without full briefing.
Justice Brennan argued the plurality adopted its sweeping new limits on habeas review without briefing or argument and in disregard of stare decisis, warning that the new rule would bar federal courts from hearing a vast range of meritorious constitutional claims that do not bear directly on guilt or innocence. He would have reached the merits of the Sixth Amendment claim and ruled for the petitioner.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court first treated retroactivity as a 'threshold question' that must be resolved before deciding whether to recognize any new constitutional rule at all, reasoning that fairness requires deciding in advance whether a rule, if adopted, could even help the prisoner asking for it.
- The Court adopted the retroactivity approach urged years earlier by Justice Harlan: new rules of criminal procedure generally do not apply to convictions that were already final when the rule was announced, a sharp break from the more flexible three-factor balancing test the Court had used before.
- The Court carved out two narrow exceptions to that general rule: a new rule still applies retroactively if it removes certain private conduct entirely from the reach of the criminal law, or if it establishes a 'watershed' procedural rule so fundamental to a fair trial that its absence seriously risks an inaccurate conviction.
- The Court modified Justice Harlan's second exception to focus specifically on procedures without which the likelihood of an accurate conviction is seriously diminished, narrowing it further than earlier formulations tied more broadly to fundamental fairness.
- Because extending the fair-cross-section requirement to the actual trial jury would be a new rule that did not fit either exception, the Court declined to decide whether the Sixth Amendment requires it, since a ruling in the prisoner's favor could not have been applied to his case anyway.
- On the separate claim under Swain v. Alabama, the Court found it procedurally barred because the prisoner never raised it in state court, and it held that his related Batson claim could not help him because Batson had already been ruled non-retroactive to final convictions in an earlier case.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Abrogates Linkletter v. Walker (381 U. S. 618)
Its multi-factor retroactivity balancing test is replaced with Justice Harlan's bright-line approach for habeas cases.
Limits Stovall v. Denno (388 U. S. 293)
Its three-factor retroactivity formula is abandoned for cases where convictions are already final on collateral review.
Reaffirms Mackey v. United States (401 U. S. 667)
Justice Harlan's separate-opinion retroactivity framework is adopted as law, though the fundamental-fairness exception is narrowed.