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Once criminal appellate relief is exhausted, new benefiical Supreme Court cases usually are of no help.

By Marks & Katz, LLC

 Bill of Rights. (From the public domain.) Appellate courts are ever-wary about opening litigation floodgates. In that context, the United States Supreme Court has -- with narrow exceptions -- made the benefits of its new rulings unavailable to criminal defendants who have already exhausted appellate relief. This week, the D.C. Court of Appeals commented on this issue as follows:  "The Supreme Court has held that a new constitutional rule of criminal procedure is not applicable on collateral review to cases that became final before the rule was announced unless the new rule (1) 'places certain kinds of primary, private individual conduct beyond the power of thecriminal law-making authority to proscribe' or (2) is a 'watershed rule[] of criminal procedure' that 'implicate[s] the fundamental fairness of the trial...continue to full post

Full post as published by Underdog on August 14, 2009 (boomark / email).