Lindh v. MurphyLindh v. Murphy
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- Before:
- Souter
Lead Opinion
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, 110 Stat. 1214, signed into law on April 24, 1996, enacted the present
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Wisconsin tried Aaron Lindh on multiple charges of murder and attempted murder. In response to his insanity defense, the State called a psychiatrist who had spoken with Lindh immediately after the killings but had later, and before Lindh’s trial, come under criminal investigation by the State for sexual exploitation of some of his patients. Although, at trial, Lindh tried to ask the psychiatrist about that investigation, hoping to suggest the witness’s interest in currying favor with the State, the trial court barred the questioning. Lindh was convicted.
On direct appeal, Lindh claimed a violation of the Confrontation Clause of the National Constitution, but despite the denial of relief, Lindh sought neither review in this Court nor state collateral review. Instead, on July 9,1992, he filed a habeas corpus application in the United States District Court, in which he again argued his Confrontation Clause claim. When relief was denied in October 1995, Lindh promptly appealed to the Seventh Circuit. Shortly after oral argument there, however, the federal habeas statute was amended, and the Seventh Circuit ordered Lindh’s case be reheard en bane to see whether the new statute applied to Lindh and, if so, how his case should be treated.
The Court of Appeals held that the Act’s amendments to chapter 153 of Title 28 generally did apply to cases pending on the date of enactment. 96 F. 3d 856, 863 (1996). Since the court did not read the statute as itself answering the questions whether or how the newly amended version of
The Seventh Circuit’s decision that the new version of
II
Before getting to the statute itself, we have to address Wisconsin’s argument that whenever a new statute on its face could apply to the litigation of events that occurred before it was enacted, there are only two alternative sources of rules to determine its ultimate temporal reach: either an “express command” from Congress or application of our Landgraf default rule. In Landgraf, we said:
“When a case implicates a federal statute enacted after the events in suit, the court’s first task is to determine whether Congress has expressly prescribed the statute’s proper reach. If Congress has done so, of course, there is no need to resort to judicial defaultrules. When, however, the statute contains no such express command, the court must determine whether the new statute would have retroaсtive effect.... If the statute would operate retroactively, our traditional presumption teaches that it does not govern absent clear congressional intent favoring such a result.” Landgraf, supra, at 280.
Wisconsin insists that this language means that, in the absence of an express command regarding temporal reach, this Court must determine that temporal reach for itself by applying its judicial default rule governing retroactivity, to the exclusion of all other standards of statutory interpretation. Brief for Respondent 9-14; see also Hunter v. United States, supra, at 1569 (suggesting that Landgraf may have announced a general clear-statement rule regarding the temporal reach of statutes).
Wisconsin’s reading, however, ignores context. The language quoted disposed of the question whether the practice of applying the law as it stands at the time of decision represented a retreat from the occasionally conflicting рosition that retroactivity in the application of new statutes is disfavored. The answer given was no, and the presumption against retroactivity was reaffirmed in the traditional rule requiring retroactive application to be supported by a clear statement. Landgraf thus referred to “express eom-mand[s],” “unambiguous directive[s],” and the like where it sought to reaffirm that clear-statement rule, but only there. See Landgraf v. USI Film Products, 511 U. S., at 263 (“[U]n-ambiguous directive” is necessary to authorize “retroactive application”); id., at 264 (statutes “will not be construed to have retroactive effect unless their language requires this result” (internal quotation marks and citation omitted)); id., at 272-273 (“Requiring clear intent assures that Congress itself has affirmatively considered the potential unfairness of retroactive application”); id., at 286 (finding “no clear evidence of congressional intent” to rebut the “presumption
In determining whether a statute’s terms would produce a retroactive effect, however, and in determining a statute‘s temporal reach generally, our normal rules of construction apply. Although Landgrafs default rule would deny application when a retroactive effect would otherwise result, other construction rules may apply to remove even the possibility of retroactivity (as by rendering the statutory provision wholly inapplicable to a particular case), as Lindh argues the recognition of a negative implication would do here. In sum, if the application of a term would be retroactive as to Lindh, the term will not be applied, even if, in the absence of retroactive effect, we might find the term applicable; if it would be prospective, the particular degree of prospectivity intended in the Act will be identified in the normal course in order to determine whether the term does apply to Lindh.
III
The statute reveals Congress’s intent to apply the amendments to chapter 153 only to such cases as were filed after the statute’s enactment (except where chapter 154 otherwise makes select provisions of chapter 153 applicable to pending cases). Title I of the Act stands more or less independent of the Act’s other titles1 in providing for the revision of federal habeas practice and does two main things. First, in §§ 101-106, it amends § 2244 and §§ 2253-2255 of chapter 153 of Title 28 of the United States Code, governing all habeas corpus proceedings in the federal courts.2 110 Stat. 1217—
We read this provision of § 107(c), expressly applying chapter 154 to all cases pending at enactment, as indicating implicitly that the amendments to chapter 153 were assumed and meant to apply to the general run of habeas cases only when those cases had been filed after the date of the Act. The significance of this provision for application to pending cases becomes apparent when one realizes that when chapter 154 is applicable, it will have substantive as well as purely procedural effects. If chapter 154 were merely procedural in a strict sense (say, setting deadlines for filing and disposition, see
The next point thаt is significant for our purposes is that everything we have just observed about chapter 154 is true of changes made to chapter 153. As we have already noted, amended
Nothing, indeed, but a different intent explains the different treatment. This might not be so if, for example, the two chapters had evolved separately in the congressional process, only to be passed together at the last minute, after chapter 154 had already acquired the mandate to apply it to pending cases. Under those circumstances, there might have been a real possibility that Congress would have intended the same rule of application for each chapter, but in the rough-and-tumble no one had thought of being careful about chapter 153, whereas someone else happened to think of inserting a
Thе insertion of § 107(c) with its different treatments of the two chapters thus illustrates the familiar rule that néga-tWe implications raised by disparate provisions are strongest when the portions of a statute treated differently had already been joined together and were being considered simultaneously when the language raising the implication was inserted. See Field v. Mans, 516 U. S. 59, 75 (1995) (“The more apparently deliberate the contrast, the stronger the inference, as applied, for example, to contrasting statutory sections originally enacted simultaneously in relevant respects ...”). When § 107(c) was added, that is, a thoughtful Member of the Congress was most likely to have intended just what the later reader sees by inference.
The strength of the implication is not diminished by the one competing explanation suggested, see Brief for Respondent 11—12, which goes as follows. Chapter 154 provides for expedited filing and adjudication of habeas
This explanation of the significance of § 107(c) is not, however, very plausible. First, one has to strain to find the ambiguity on which the alternative explanation is supposed to rest. Why would a Congress intent on expediting capital habeas cases have wanted to disfavor a State that already had done its part to promote sound resolution of prisoners’ petitions in just the way Congress sought to encourage? It would make no sense to leave such States on the slower track, and it seеms unlikely that federal courts would so have interpreted § 2261(b). Second, anyone who had seen such ambiguity lurking could have dispatched it in a far simpler and straightforward fashion than enacting § 107(c); all the drafter would have needed to do was to insert three words into § 2261(b), to make it refer to a State that “establishes or has established ... a mechanism.” It simply is not plausible
Finally, we should speak to the significance of the new
Continuing on the State’s assumption that
This analysis is itself consistent, in turn, with Congress’s failure in
There is only one loose end.
The upshot is that our analysis accords more coherence to §§ 107(c) and 2264(b) than any rival we have examined. That is enough. We hold that the negative implication of § 107(c) is that the new provisions of chapter 153 generally apply only to cases filed after the Act became effective. Because Lindh’s case is not one of these, we reverse the
It is so ordered.
Notes
The other titles address such issues as restitution to victims of crime (Title II), various aspects of international terrorism (Titles II, III, IV, VII, VIII), restrictions on various kinds of weapons and explosives (Titles V and VI), and miscellaneous items (Title IX). See 110 Stat. 1214-1217.
Section 103 also amends
Section 108 further adds a “technical amendment” regarding expert and investigative fees for the defense under
In United States v. Nordic Village, Inc., 503 U. S. 30, 34-37 (1992), this Court held that the existence of “plausible” alternative interpretations of statutory language meant that that language could not qualify as an “unambiguous” expression of a waiver of sovereign immunity. And eases where this Court has found truly “retroactive” effect adequately authorized by a statute have involved statutory language that was so clear that it could sustain only one interpretation. See Graham & Foster v. Goodcell, 282 U. S. 409, 416-420 (1931) (holding that a statutory provision “was manifestly intended to operate retroactively according to its terms” where the tax statute spelled out meticulously the circumstances that defined the claims to which it applied and where the alternative interpretation was absurd); Automobile Club of Mich. v. Commissioner, 353 U. S. 180, 184 (1957) (finding a clear statement authorizing the Commissioner of Internal Revenue to correct tax rulings and regulations “retroactively” where the statutory authorization for the Commissioner’s action spoke explicitly in terms of “retrоactivity”); United States v. Zacks, 375 U. S. 59, 65-67 (1963) (declining to give retroactive effect to a new substantive tax provision by reopening claims otherwise barred by statute of limitations and observing that Congress had provided for just this sort of retroactivity for other substantive provisions by explicitly creating new grace periods in which otherwise barred claims could be brought under the new substantive law). Cf. Seminole Tribe of Fla. v. Florida, 517 U. S. 44, 55-57 (1996) (finding a clear statement of congressional abrogation of Eleventh Amendment immunity where the federal statute went beyond granting federal jurisdiction to hear a claim and explicitly contemplated “the State” as defendant in federal court in numerous provisions of the Act).
Landgraf suggested that the following language from an unenacted precursor of the statute at issue in that case might possibly have qualified as a clear statement for retroactive effect: “[This Act] shall apply to all proceedings pending on or commеnced after the date of enactment of this Act.” 511 U. S., at 260 (emphasis added; internal quotation marks omitted). But, even if that language did qualify, its use of the sort of absolute language absent from § 107(e) distinguishes it. Cf. United States v. Williams, 514 U. S. 527, 531-532 (1995) (finding a waiver of sovereign immunity “unequivocally expressed” in language granting jurisdiction to the courts over “[a]ny civil action against the United States for the recovery of any internal-revenue tax alleged to have been erroneously or illegally assessed or collected” (emphasis in Williams; internal quotation marks omitted)); id., at 541 (Scaua, J., concurring) (“The [clear-statement] rule does not . . . require explicit waivers to be given a meaning that is implausible ...”).
See 96 F. 3d 856, 861 (CA7 1996). Lindh concedes this much. Brief for Petitioner 23, n. 15.
Amendment 1199, offered by Senator Dole on May 25,1995, added what was then § 607(e) and now is § 107(c). See 141 Cong. Rec. 14600, 14614 (1995). A comparison of S. 735 as it stood on May 1, 1995, and S. 735 as it passed the Senate on June 7, after the substitution of Amendment 1199, reveals that the part of the bill dealing with habeas corpus reform was substantially the same before and after the amendment in all ways relevant to our interpretation of § 107(c).
There are reasons why the position that
Nevertheless, as stated in the text, we assume for the sake of argument that the State’s understanding of
Dissenting Opinion
with whom Justice Scalia, •Justice Kennedy, and Justice Thomas join, dissenting.
The Court in this case conducts a truncated inquiry into a question of congressional intent, and, I believe, reaches the wrong result. The Court begins, uncontroversially enough, by observing that application of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) to pending cases depends upon congressional intent, and that our inquiry into that intent should rely upon the “normal rules” of statutory construction. Ante, at 326. The Court then proceeds, however, to disregard all of our retroactivity case law — which it rather oddly disparages as manifestаtions of “Landgrafs default rule,” ibid. — in favor of a permissible, but by no means controlling, negative inference that it draws from the statutory text. I would instead interpret the AEDPA in light of the whole of our longstanding retroactivity jurisprudence, and accordingly find that the. amended
The first question we must ask is whether Congress has expressly resolved whether the provision in question applies to pending cases. Landgraf v. USI Film Products, 511 U. S. 244, 280 (1994). Here, the answer is plainly no. The AEDPA does not clearly state, one way or the other, whether chapter 153 applies to pending cases. Given congressional silence, we must still interpret that statute, and that interpretation is in turn guided by the retroactivity principles we have developed over the years. The Court relies on one canon of statutory interpretation, expressio unius est exclusio alterius, to the exclusion of all others.
The Court’s opinion rests almost entirely on the negative inference that can be drawn from the fact that Congress expressly made chaptеr 154, pertaining to capital cases, ap
First, because chapter 154’s applicability is conditioned upon antecedent events — namely, a State’s establishing qualifying capital habeas representation procedures — Congress could have perceived a greater likelihood that, absent express provision otherwise, courts would fail to apply that chapter’s provisions to pending capital cases. Second, because of the characteristically extended pendency of collateral attacks on capital convictions,1 and because of Congress’ concern with the perceived acquiescence in capital defendants’ dilatory tactics by some federal courts (as evidenced by chapter 154’s strict time limits for adjudication of capital cases and, indeed, by the very title of the statute, the “Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996”), Congress could very well have desired to speak with exacting clarity as to the applicability of the AEDPA to pending capital cases. Or third, Congress, while intending the AEDPA definitely to apply to pending capital cases, could have been uncertain or in disagreement as to which of the many portions of chapter 153 should or should not apply to pending cases. Congress could simply have assumed that the courts would sort out such questions, using our ordinary retroactivity presumptions.
None of these competing inferences is clearly superior to the others. The Court rejects the first, ante, at 330-332, as an “implausible” solution to an “unlikely” ambiguity. But
The Court finds additional support for its inference in the new
The Court’s somewhat tortured interpretation of this section, as a backhanded way of making
Chapter 154 establishes special procedures for capital prisoners.
Petitioner protests that to read
First, we have generally applied new procedural rules to pending cases. Landgraf, 511 U. S., at 275; see also Beazell v. Ohio, 269 U. S. 167, 170-171 (1925); Ex parte Collett, 337 U. S. 55, 71 (1949); Dobbert v. Florida, 432 U. S. 282, 293-294 (1977); Collins v. Youngblood, 497 U. S. 37, 45 (1990). This is because “rules of procedure regulate secondary rather than primary conduct.” Landgraf, supra, at 275. Here, the primary conduct occurred when Lindh murdered two people in the sheriff’s office of the City-County Building in Madison, Wisconsin. Obviously, the AEDPA in no way purports to regulate that past conduct. Lindh’s state-court proceedings constituted secondary conduct. Undеr our retroactivity
Second, we have usually аpplied changes in law to prospective forms of relief. Landgraf supra, at 273; see also Duplex Printing Press Co. v. Deering, 254 U. S. 443, 464 (1921); American Steel Foundries v. Tri-City Central Trades Council, 257 U. S. 184, 201 (1921); Hall v. Beals, 396 U. S. 45, 48 (1969) (per curiam); Kaiser Aluminum & Chemical Corp. v. Bonjorno, 494 U. S. 827, 852 (1990) (Scalia, J., concurring). Unlike damages actions, which are “quintessential^ backward looking,” Landgraf, supra, at 282, the writ of habeas corpus is prospective in nature. Habeas does not compensate for past wrongful incarceration, nor does it punish the State for imposing it. See Lane v. Williams, 455 U. S. 624, 631 (1982). Instead, habeas is a challenge to unlawful custody, and when the writ issues it prevents further illegal custody. See Preiser v. Rodriguez, 411 U. S. 475, 489, 494 (1973).
Finally, we have regularly applied statutes ousting jurisdiction to pending litigation.3 Landgraf, supra, at 274; see
There is a good argument that
Whether the approach is framed in terms of “retroactive effect,” as the Landgraf majority put it, 511 U. S., at 280, or in terms of “the relevant activity that the rule regulates,” as Justice Scalia’s concurrence put it, see id., at 291 (opinion concurring in judgment), our longstanding practice of applying procedural, prospective, and jurisdiction-ousting statutes to pending cases must play an important part in the decision. These principles all favor application of
It is a procedural statute, regulating prospective relief, and addressed directly to federal courts and removing their power to give such relief in specified circumstances. Our cases therefore strongly suggest that, absent congressional direction otherwise, we should apply
Because the Court’s inquiry is incomplete, I believe it has reached the wrong result in this case. I would affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.
See, e. g., Pet. for Habeas Corpus in In re Mata, O. T. 1995, No. 96-5679, p. 7 (describing how it took nine years and three months for a Federal District Court to deny, and the Ninth Circuit to affirm, petitioner’s first federal capital habeas petition).
This conclusion would also be consistent with the conclusions of the Powell Committee, which was convened to address the problems in capital habeas eases and upon whose recommendations chapter 154 was substan tially based. See Judicial Conference of the United States, Ad Hoc Committee on Federal Habeas Corpus in Capital Cases, Committee Report and Proposal (Aug. 23, 1989). The Committee’s Comment to Proposed § 2259 (which tracks the AEDPA’s
Although in Hughes Aircraft Co. v. United States ex rel. Schumer, 520 U. S. 939 (1997), we recently rejected a presumption favoring retroactivity for jurisdietion-creaimp statutes, see id., at 950-951, nothing in Hughes disparaged our longstanding practice of applying jurisdiction-oMSimgr statutes to pending cases.