US Supreme Court grants cert. on retroactivity issue
The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari today in Danforth v. Minnesota. The case presents an issue of whether state courts are required to use the standard announced in Teague v. Lane to determine whether decisions by the United States Supreme Court apply retroactively to state court criminal cases, or may a state court apply state-law or state-constitution based retroactivity tests that afford application of Supreme Court decisions to a broader class of criminal defendants than the class defined by Teague. The certiorari petition is available here, with thanks to Scotusblog.
The issue presented may be of significant consequence in Nevada as the Nevada Supreme Court applies a different retroactivity test from that provided in Teague. In fact, the petitioner in Danforth favorably quotes from the Nevada Supreme Court's decision in Colwell v. State, 59 P.3d 463, 470 (2002):
"In Teague, the Supreme Court, instead of focusing on the purpose and impact of a new constitutional rule, looked to the function of federal habeas review, which is to ensure that state courts conscientiously follow federal
constitutional standards. The Court determined that this function is met by testing state convictions against the constitutional law recognized at the time of trial and direct appellate review . . .[.] Therefore, once a conviction
has become final, federal courts should generally not interfere with the state courts by applying new rules retroactively."
Petition at page 7.