Caseflicks

Supreme Court of the United States • 2004

Schriro v. Summerlin

542 U.S. 348 | 124 S. Ct. 2519 | 159 L. Ed. 2d 442 | 2004 U.S. LEXIS 4574

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Takeaway

In short, this case holds that Ring’s requirement that juries find facts making a defendant eligible for death is a new procedural rule, not a substantive or watershed rule, and therefore does not apply retroactively to sentences already final on direct review.

Background

Warren Summerlin was convicted in Arizona of first-degree murder and sexual assault for the killing of Brenna Bailey. Under Arizona’s then-existing capital-sentencing scheme, a judge—not a jury—determined whether statutory aggravating factors justified a death sentence. The judge found two aggravators, including that the murder was especially heinous, cruel, or depraved, found no mitigation, and sentenced Summerlin to death. The Arizona Supreme Court affirmed on direct review in 1983.

While Summerlin’s federal habeas case was pending, the Supreme Court decided Apprendi v. New Jersey and Ring v. Arizona. Ring held that Arizona could not permit a judge to find the aggravating circumstance necessary to make a defendant eligible for death; the Sixth Amendment required a jury to make that finding. The en banc Ninth Circuit applied Ring to Summerlin’s already-final sentence, holding that Ring was either substantive or a watershed procedural rule under Teague v. Lane. The Supreme Court granted review and reversed.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether Ring v. Arizona announced a substantive rule that applies retroactively to cases already final on direct review.

Holding

No. Ring announced a procedural, not substantive, rule.

Reasoning

Under Teague, new substantive rules generally apply retroactively because they alter the range of conduct or class of persons the government may punish. By contrast, rules that regulate the method for deciding a defendant’s culpability or punishment are procedural and ordinarily do not apply to final convictions.

Ring did not change which murders Arizona could punish by death. Arizona’s statutory aggravating circumstances still defined the same class of death-eligible defendants before and after Ring. Ring changed only who had to find those facts: a jury rather than a judge.

Although Ring described aggravating circumstances as the functional equivalent of elements for Sixth Amendment purposes, that description did not itself make the aggravators new substantive elements of Arizona murder law. The Court distinguished between holding that a fact the State has made essential to death eligibility must be found by a jury, which is procedural, and making a fact essential to the death penalty, which would be substantive.

Rules that reallocate factfinding authority between judge and jury are prototypical procedural rules. Ring therefore limited Arizona’s permissible procedures for imposing death rather than narrowing the State’s substantive power to impose it.

Issue #2

Whether Ring announced a watershed rule of criminal procedure that applies retroactively on collateral review.

Holding

No. Ring’s jury-factfinding requirement is not a watershed procedural rule under Teague.

Reasoning

The watershed exception is exceptionally narrow. A procedural rule must do more than embody an important constitutional protection; it must be indispensable to fundamental fairness and must seriously diminish the likelihood of an accurate outcome when absent.

Summerlin argued that juries are more accurate because deliberation can restrain individual error, juries may better represent community judgment, and judges may be influenced by inadmissible evidence, professional habits, or political pressures. The Court held that the evidence and arguments about comparative accuracy were too equivocal to establish that judge factfinding creates an impermissibly large risk of an erroneous death sentence.

There are also plausible reasons that judges may be more reliable in some settings, including their experience with legal standards and sentencing. Because reasonable observers continue to disagree about whether juries are generally better factfinders than judges, the Court could not conclude that judicial factfinding seriously undermines accuracy within Teague’s demanding standard.

DeStefano v. Woods reinforced the conclusion. There, the Court declined to apply retroactively Duncan v. Louisiana’s recognition of a state criminal defendant’s right to a jury trial. If a criminal trial conducted entirely before a judge was not regarded as impermissibly inaccurate, the Court reasoned, a capital proceeding in which a judge found only the aggravating factors could not qualify as watershed.

The Court rejected the view that capital punishment’s special severity justified a broader retroactivity inquiry. Teague’s framework, not a free-ranging balance of finality and death-is-different concerns, governed the question.

Dissents

Justice Breyer

Reasoning

Justice Breyer agreed that Ring announced a procedural rule, but concluded that it was a watershed one that should apply retroactively to final death sentences. In the capital context, Teague’s accuracy inquiry should ask whether the procedure is central to accurately deciding whether death is a legally appropriate punishment, rather than only whether it affects guilt or innocence.

Capital aggravators often require more than finding historical facts. Terms such as “especially heinous, cruel, or depraved” call for community-based moral and normative judgments. A jury, drawn from a cross-section of the community, is better positioned than a judge to identify and apply those standards and to express the community’s judgment about whether death is warranted.

Death’s severity and irrevocability require an unusually high degree of accuracy. Justice Breyer maintained that allowing one person sentenced through an unconstitutional judge-factfinding procedure to be executed merely because the sentence became final before Ring, while granting a new sentencing proceeding to another identically situated defendant, undermines both equal justice and public confidence in capital sentencing.

The usual interests against retroactivity carried less force here. Ring would affect a relatively small number of death-row prisoners, capital litigation already tends to last for years, and rehabilitation-related finality concerns have little relevance where the punishment is death. Those considerations, in his view, favored retroactive application.

Justice Breyer also found DeStefano distinguishable. It predated Teague and relied on reliance and administrative-burden considerations that were much stronger when retroactivity could have affected large numbers of ordinary criminal convictions. Ring concerned a smaller group, capital sentencing, and a distinctive deprivation of jury factfinding on death eligibility.