Metrish v. Lancaster

Retroactivity: due process violation: habeas relief: under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), Lancaster may obtain federal habeas relief only if the Michigan Court of Appeals, in rejecting his due process claim, unrea­sonably applied “clearly established Federal law, as determined by this Court.” 28 U. S. C. §2254(d)(1). This standard is “difficult to meet”: Lancaster must show that the Michigan Court of Appeals’ de­cision rested on “an error well understood and comprehended in ex­isting law beyond any possibility for fairminded disagreement.” Har­rington v. Richter, 562 U. S. ___, ___; Held: Lancaster is not entitled to federal habeas relief; in Rogers, the petitioner contested the Tennessee Supreme Court’s retroactive abolition of the common-law “year and a day rule,” which barred a murder conviction “unless the victim had died by the de­fendant’s act within a year and a day of the act.” 532 U. S., at 453. This Court found no due process violation. “Judicial alteration of a common law doctrine of criminal law,” the Court held, “violates the principle of fair warning, and hence must not be given retroactive ef­fect, only where the alteration is ‘unexpected and indefensible by reference to the law which had been expressed prior to the conduct in issue.’ ” Id., at 462. Judged by this standard, the retroactive aboli­tion of the year and a day rule encountered no constitutional imped­iment. The rule was “widely viewed as an outdated relic of the com­mon law,” had been routinely rejected by modern courts and legislators, and had been mentioned in reported Tennessee decisions “only three times, and each time in dicta.” Id., at 462–464; this Court has never found a due process violation in circumstances remotely resembling Lancaster’s case—i.e., where a state supreme court, squarely ad­dressing a particular issue for the first time, rejected a consistent line of lower court decisions based on the supreme court’s reasonable in­terpretation of the language of a controlling statute. Fairminded ju­rists could conclude that a state supreme court decision of that order is not “ ‘unexpected and indefensible by reference to existing law.’ ” Id., at 462 (U.S. S. Ct., 20.05.13, Metrish v. Lancaster, J. Ginsburg, unanimous).

Rétroactivité : violation du droit à un procès équitable : remède de l'habeas (fédéral) : pour l'emporter dans la procédure fédérale de l'habeas, le requérant doit démontrer que l'autorité inférieure a appliqué de manière déraisonnable du droit fédéral clairement établi. Cette démonstration est difficile à apporter. En l'espèce, la requête d'habeas est rejetée. Dans une affaire antérieure jugée par la Cour Suprême, le requérant contestait l'abolition rétroactive par la cour suprême de l'état du Tennessee de la règle de la Common law prévoyant qu'une condamnation pour meurtre ne pouvait être prononcée si la victime décédait au-delà d'une année et un jour suivant l'acte délictueux. La Cour Suprême a jugé que la cour suprême du Tennessee n'avait pas commis de violation du droit à un procès équitable. Une telle violation n'aurait pu être retenue que si la modification du droit était imprévue et indéfendable au regard du droit précédemment en vigueur, ce qui n'est pas le cas s'agissant d'une règle comme la règle de l'année plus un jour, largement critiquée.