(Distributed) Oct 13 2015 The “evolving standards” test concedes that in 1969 the State had the power to punish Henry Montgomery as it did. It follows that a court has no authority to leave in place a conviction or sentence that violates a substantive rule, regardless of whether the conviction or sentence became final before the rule was announced.  Petitioner is Henry Montgomery. 567 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 1). Because Justice Bradley’s dicta in Siebold was a gloss on the 1789 Judiciary Act, Congress could at least supply a fix to it. “Section 2254(d)(1) [of the federal habeas statute] refers, in the past tense, to a state-court adjudication that ‘resulted in’ a decision that was contrary to, or ‘involved’ an unreasonable application of, established law. Compare, e.g., Martin v. Symmes, 782 F. 3d 939, 943 (CA8 2015); Johnson v. Ponton, 780 F. 3d 219, 224–226 (CA4 2015); Chambers v. State, 831 N. W. 2d 311, 331 (Minn. 2013); and State v. Tate, 2012–2763, p. 17 (La.  It is simply wrong to divorce that dictum from the facts it addressed. 2  The majority presumably regards any person one day short of voting age as a “child.”. The Fourth Amendment also applies differently on direct and collateral review.  This second mechanism allows a prisoner to bring a collateral attack on his or her sentence by filing a motion to correct an illegal sentence. Petitioner Montgomery was 17 years old in 1963, when he killed a deputy sheriff in Louisiana. But the Court could not find a satisfactory answer: “A judgment may be erroneous and not void, and it may be erroneous because it is void. Montgomery then filed an application for a supervisory writ. Federal and (like it or not) state judges are henceforth to resolve the knotty “legal” question: whether a 17-year-old who murdered an innocent sheriff’s deputy half a century ago was at the time of his trial “incorrigible.” Under Miller, bear in mind, the inquiry is whether the inmate was seen to be incorrigible when he was sentenced—not whether he has proven corrigible and so can safely be paroled today. Even then, the Court reassured States that “the punishment of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole is itself a severe sanction,” implicitly still available for juveniles. Montgomery was 17 years old at the time of the crime. The Due Process Clause? ”); id., at 332 (Brennan, J., dissenting) (“No new facts or arguments have come to light suggesting that our [past] reading of the federal habeas statute . . . Instead, the Constitution leaves the initial choice to entertain federal claims up to state courts, which are “tribunals over which the government of the Union has no adequate control, and which may be closed to any claim asserted under a law of the United States.” Osborn v. Bank of United States, 9 Wheat. On June 25, 2012, the Supreme Court issued an historic ruling in Miller v. Alabama, holding that mandatory life-without-parole sentences for all children 17 or younger convicted of homicide are unconstitutional. The Court now holds that when a new substantive rule of constitutional law controls the outcome of a case, the Constitution requires state collateral review courts to give retroactive effect to that rule. No principle of equal protection requires the criminal law of all ages to be the same. 2013–1163 (6/20/14), 141 So. (“[T]he writ has historically been available for attacking convictions on [substantive] grounds”). “Simply fishing one case from the stream of appellate review, using it as a vehicle for pronouncing new constitutional standards, and then permitting a stream of similar cases subsequently to flow by unaffected by that new rule constitute an indefensible departure from th[e] model of judicial review.” Mackey, supra, at 679.  The decision in Griffith v. Kentucky, 479 U. S. 314 (1987), heeded this constitutional concern. Ibid. Martinez v. Court of Appeal of Cal., Fourth Appellate Dist., 528 U. S. 152, 165–166 (2000) (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment) (“Since a State could . . . 14–280. Argued October 13, 2015—Decided January 25, 2016. In the wake of Miller, the question has arisen whether its holding is retroactive to juvenile offenders whose convictions and sentences were final when Miller was decided.  The trial court denied Montgomery’s motion on the ground that Miller is not retroactive on collateral review. under the Eighth Amendment.” See ante, at 13.  Unlike the rule the Court announces today, this limitation at least reflects a constitutional principle. Only 15 pages later, after softening the reader with 3 pages of obfuscating analysis, does the majority dare to attribute to Miller that which Miller explicitly denies. Following his analysis, we have clarified time and again—recently in Greene v. Fisher, 565 U. S. ___, ___–___ (2011) (slip op., at 4–5)—that federal habeas courts are to review state-court decisions against the law and factual record that existed at the time the decisions were made. Scalia, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Thomas and Alito, JJ., joined. To ensure this conclusion is correct, the Court appointed Richard D. Bernstein as amicus curiaeto brief and argue the position that the Court lacks jurisdiction. Shortly after this Court announced Teague v. Lane, 489 U. S. 288 (1989), the Louisiana Supreme Court adopted Teague’s framework to govern the provision of postconviction remedies available to state prisoners in its state courts as a matter of state law. Before Brown v. Allen, 344 U. S. 443 (1953), “federal courts would never consider the merits of a constitutional claim if the habeas petitioner had a fair opportunity to raise his arguments in the original proceeding.” Desist, 394 U. S., at 261 (Harlan, J., dissenting). In contrast, where procedural error has infected a trial, a conviction or sentence may still be accurate and the defendant’s continued confinement may still be lawful, see Schriro v. Summerlin, 542 U. S. 348, 352–353; for this reason, a trial conducted under a procedure found unconstitutional in a later case does not automatically invalidate a defendant’s conviction or sentence.  Giving Miller retroactive effect, moreover, does not require States to relitigate sentences, let alone convic tions, in every case where a juvenile offender received mandatory life without parole. Protection against disproportionate punishment is the central substantive guarantee of the Eighth Amendment and goes far beyond the manner of determining a defendant’s sentence.   (a) Teague v. Lane, 489 U. S. 288, a federal habeas case, set forth a framework for the retroactive application of a new constitutional rule to convictions that were final when the new rule was announced.  Justice Scalia, with whom Justice Thomas and Justice Alito join, dissenting. Louisiana follows these basic Supremacy Clause principles in its postconviction proceedings for challenging the legality of a sentence. One would think, then, that it is none of our business that a 69-year-old Louisiana prisoner’s state-law motion to be resentenced according to Miller v. Alabama, 567 U. S. ___ (2012), a case announced almost half a century after his sentence was final, was met with a firm rejection on state-law grounds by the Louisiana Supreme Court. Cornell Hood is listed as a Manager with Skyy Transportation LLC in Louisiana. Those procedural requirements do not, of course, transform substantive rules into procedural ones. cannot run afoul of the Equal Protection Clause if there is a rational relationship between the disparity of treatment and some legitimate governmental purpose.” Armour v. Indianapolis, 566 U. S. ___, ___ (2012) (slip op., at 6) (internal quotation marks omitted; ellipsis in original). The Louisiana Supreme Court has held that none of those grounds provides a basis for collateral review of sentencing errors. The Court explained that if “this position is well taken, it affects the foundation of the whole proceedings.” Id., at 376. 441, 466 (1963). The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday in Montgomery v.Louisiana that its ban on mandatory life-without-parole sentences for juvenile offenders also …  This leads to the question whether Miller’s prohibition on mandatory life without parole for juvenile offenders indeed did announce a new substantive rule that, under the Constitution, must be retroactive. I, §9, cl. See Siebold, 100 U. S., at 376. But it allowed for the previously mentioned exceptions to this rule of nonredressability: substantive rules placing “certain kinds of primary, private individual conduct beyond the power of the criminal law-making authority to proscribe” and “watershed rules of criminal procedure.” Id., at 311. It only elicits another question: What federal law is supreme?  There is one silver lining to today’s ruling: States still have a way to mitigate its impact on their court systems.  By holding that new substantive rules are, indeed, retroactive, Teague continued a long tradition of giving retroactive effect to constitutional rights that go beyond procedural guarantees. A maxim shown to be more relevant to this case, by the analysis that the majority omitted, is this: The Supremacy Clause does not impose upon state courts a constitutional obligation it fails to impose upon federal courts. Whether a new rule bars States from proscribing certain conduct or from inflicting a certain punishment, “[i]n both cases, the Constitution itself deprives the State of the power to impose a certain pen- alty.” Id., at 330.  Substantive rules, then, set forth categorical constitutional guarantees that place certain criminal laws and punishments altogether beyond the State’s power to impose. It cannot compel state postconviction courts to apply new substantive rules retroactively. And the States are unquestionably entitled to take that view of things. Almost 50 years later, in 2012, the Supreme Court decided Miller v.  Kennedy, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., joined.  The majority grandly asserts that “[t]here is no grandfather clause that permits States to enforce punishments the Constitution forbids.” Ante, at 12 (emphasis added). I respectfully dissent. As Justice Harlan explained, where a State lacked the power to proscribe the habeas petitioner’s conduct, “it could not constitutionally insist that he remain in jail.” Desist, supra, at 261, n. 2 (dissenting opinion). The Danforth majority limited its analysis to Teague’s general  retroactivity bar, leaving open the question whether Teague’s two exceptions are binding on the States as a matter of constitutional law. Neither Teague nor Danforth had reason to address whether States are required as a constitutional matter to give retroactive effect to new substantive or watershed procedural rules. it has a duty to grant the relief that federal law requires”). Article III thus defines the scope of federal judicial power. See, e.g., Wyo. In Montgomery v. Louisiana (2016), the Court ruled that the decision in Miller v. Alabama had to be applied retroactively, and required those sentencing to consider “children’s diminished culpability, and heightened capacity for Thus, our precedents recognize a right to counsel on direct review, but not in collateral proceedings. Under that understanding, due process excluded any right to have new substantive rules apply retroactively.  Justice O’Connor’s plurality opinion in Teague v. Lane, 489 U. S. 288 (1989), set forth a framework for retroactiv- ity in cases on federal collateral review. 1966). 552 U. S., at 278; see also id., at 277 (“[T]he case before us now does not involve either of the ‘Teague exceptions’ ”). Graham v. Florida, 560 U. S. 48, 69 (2010).  As stated above, a procedural rule “regulate[s] only the manner of determining the defendant’s culpability.” Schriro, 542 U. S., at 353. See Brief for Petitioner, Henry Montgomery at 3. In Miller v. Alabama, 567 U. S. ___ (2012), the Court held that a juvenile convicted of a homicide offense could not be sentenced to life in prison without parole absent consideration of the juvenile’s special circumstances in light of the principles and purposes of juvenile sentencing. And third, a child’s character is not as ‘well formed’ as an adult’s; his traits are ‘less fixed’ and his actions less likely to be ‘evidence of irretrievable depravity.’ ” 567 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 8) (quoting Roper, supra, at 569–570; alterations, citations, and some internal quotation marks omitted). L. Rev. Miller did bar life without parole, however, for all but the rarest of juvenile offenders, those whose crimes reflect permanent incorrigibility. Second, children ‘are more vulnerable to negative influences and outside pressures,’ including from their family and peers; they have limited ‘control over their own environment’ and lack the ability to extricate themselves from horrific, crime-producing settings. 567 U. S., at ___, n. 4 (slip op., at 8, n. 4). Louisiana contends that because Miller requires this process, it must have set forth a procedural rule. Statutory and ( increasingly ) constitutional laws change dictum from the sentence imposed 401 S.. 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