Brown v. Louisiana

• Decision Date: 16 June 1980
• Docket Number: No. 79-5364,79-5364
• Citation: 100 S.Ct. 2214,447 U.S. 323,65 L.Ed.2d 159
• Parties: Darnell BROWN, Petitioner, v. State of LOUISIANA
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

447 U.S. 323

100 S.Ct. 2214

65 L.Ed.2d 159

Darnell BROWN, Petitioner,

v State of LOUISIANA.

No. 79-5364.

Argued March 25, 1980.

Decided June 16, 1980.

Syllabus

While petitioner's appeal from his felony conviction—based on a nonunanimous six-person jury verdict—was pending in the Louisiana Supreme court, Burch v. Louisiana, 441 U.S. 130, 99 S.Ct. 1623, 60 L.Ed.2d 96, was decided, holding unconstitutional those provisions of the Louisiana Constitution and Code of Criminal Procedure that sanctioned conviction of a nonpetty offense by a nonunanimous jury of six. The Louisiana Supreme Court thereafter affirmed petitioner's conviction, holding that the rule of Burch v. Louisiana, supra, should not be applied retroactively to cases tried by juries empaneled prior to the date of that decision.

Held: The judgment is reversed, and the case is remanded. Pp. 327-337; 337.

La., 371 So.2d 746, reversed and remanded.

Mr. Justice BRENNAN, joined by Mr. Justice STEWART, Mr. Justice MARSHALL, and Mr. Justice BLACKMUN, concluded that the constitutional principle announced in Burch v. Louisiana, supra, that conviction of a nonpetty criminal offense in a state court by a nonunanimous six-person jury violates the accused's right to trial by jury guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment as applied to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment, should be given retroactive application. Pp. 327-337.

(a) The test for deciding whether a new constitutional doctrine should be applied retroactively contemplates the consideration of (i) the purpose to be served by the new doctrine; (ii) the extent of the reliance by law enforcement authorities on the old standards; and (iii) the impact on the administration of justice of a retroactive application of the new standards. Foremost among these factors is the first, and controlling significance will be given to factors (ii) and (iii) only when factor (i) does not clearly favor retroactivity or prospectivity. Pp. 327-329.

(b) Burch established that the concurrence of six jurors was constitutionally required to preserve the substance of the jury trial right and assure the reliability of the jury's verdict. The Burch rule's purpose to eliminate a practice that threatened the jury's ability properly to perform its function of determining the truth in serious criminal cases clearly requires retroactive application Pp. 330-334.

(c) Due regard for the State's good-faith reliance on the old standards and the impact of retroactivity on the administration of justice does not

counsel a contrary result. Here, the element of justifiable reliance on pre-Burch standards is minimal, since unlike other cases that have been accorded prospective effect only, Burch did not overrule any prior decisions of this Court or invalidate a practice of heretofore unquestioned legitimacy. Similarly, retroactive application of the Burch rule here will not have a devastating impact on the administration of criminal law, since it appears that by 1979 only two States permitted conviction of nonpetty offenses by a nonunanimous six-member jury, and that one of them—Louisiana—did not institute its scheme until 1975. Moreover, the decision in this case will not affect the validity of all convictions obtained under Louisiana's unconstitutional jury practice during that 4-year period but only those in which it can be shown that the verdict was less than unanimous. Pp. 335-337.

Mr. Justice POWELL, joined by Mr. Justice STEVENS, being of the view that new constitutional rules should apply retroactively in cases still pending on direct review, such as the instant case, concurred in the judgment. P. 337.

John M. Lawrence, New Orleans, La., for petitioner.

Thomas Chester, New Orleans, La., for respondent, pro hac vice, by special leave of Court.

Mr. Justice BRENNAN announced the judgment of the Court and delivered an opinion, in which Mr. Justice STEWART, Mr. Justice MARSHALL, and Mr. Justice BLACKMUN joined.

Burch v. Louisiana, 441 U.S. 130, 99 S.Ct. 1623, 60 L.Ed.2d 96 (1979), held that conviction of a nonpetty criminal offense by a nonunanimous six-person jury violates the accused's right to trial by jury guaranteed by the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments. The issue

in this case is whether the constitutional principle announced in Burch is to be given retroactive application.

I

On July 31, 1978, petitioner Darnell Brown was charged by bill of information in Orleans Parish with simple burglary, a felony punishable by confinement in the parish prison or state penitentiary for a maximum term of 12 years. La.Rev.Stat.Ann. § 14:62 (West Supp.1979). At the time, the Louisiana Constitution and Code of Criminal Procedure provided that such crimes should be tried by a jury of six persons, five of whom must concur to render a verdict.¹ Before trial, petitioner filed a motion to quash pursuant to Art. 532(9) of the Louisiana Code of Criminal Procedure, arguing that his "due

process rights under the Sixth and the Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution as enunciated in Ballew v. Georgia, [435 U.S. 223, 98 S.Ct. 1029, 55 L.Ed.2d 234 (1978)], will be violated by a less than unanimous vote by a six person jury." App. 5. Petitioner therefore requested the trial court to order a jury of 12 or, in the alternative, to require a unanimous verdict of the jury of 6.

Petitioner's motion was denied, and on August 23 his trial commenced before a six-member jury. That same afternoon, after deliberating for approximately one hour, the jury returned a verdict of guilty. At petitioner's request, the court polled the jurors and ascertained that their vote was 5 to 1 to convict. Sentencing was set for August 30, at which time petitioner renewed his objection to the nonunanimous six-person verdict by a motion for new trial. The trial judge again denied the motion and sentenced petitioner to a term of 22 years' imprisonment at hard labor.²

Petitioner appealed his conviction to the Louisiana Supreme Court, assigning as principal error the trial judge's refusal to grant the motion to quash. On April 17, 1979, while petitioner's case was still pending on direct review in the Louisiana courts, Burch v. Louisiana, supra, was decided, holding unconstitutional those provisions of the Louisiana Constitution and Code of Criminal Procedure that sanctioned conviction of a nonpetty offense by a nonunanimous jury of six. Some five weeks later, on May 21, 1979, the Louisiana Supreme Court affirmed petitioner's conviction. Although it implicitly acknowledged that Burch requires unanimous verdicts by six-person juries in all future prosecutions of simple burglary,³ the court nonetheless concluded, without elabora-

tion, that "the rule of Burch, supra, should not be applied retroactively to juries empaneled prior to the date of the Burch decision." La., 371 So.2d 746, 748 (1979) (emphasis in original). We granted certiorari. 440 U.S. 990, 100 S.Ct. 520, 62 L.Ed.2d 419 (1979). We reverse.

II

Linkletter v. Walker, 381 U.S. 618, 85 S.Ct. 1731, 14 L.Ed.2d 601 (1965), was the first instance in which the Court declined to apply a new doctrine respecting one of the provisions of the Bill of Rights retroactively for the benefit of a previously convicted defendant. In the intervening 15 years, we have often considered the question of the retroactivity of decisions expounding new constitutional rules of criminal procedure, and have endeavored to elaborate appropriate standards for determining which rules are to be accorded retrospective and which only prospective effect. From the welter of case law that has developed in this area, several unequivocal principles emerge to guide our analysis in the present case.

It is by now uncontroverted that "the Constitution neither prohibits nor requires retrospective effect." Id., at 629, 85 S.Ct., at 1737. Thus, although before Linkletter new constitutional rules had been applied to cases that had become final before promulgation of the rule, see id., at 628, and n. 13, 85 S.Ct., at 1737, and n. 13, that decision firmly settled that "in appropriate cases the Court may in the interest of justice make the rule prospective . . . where the exigencies of the situation require such an application." Id., at 628, 85 S.Ct., at 1737; Johnson v. New Jersey, 384 U.S. 719, 726-727, 86 S.Ct. 1772, 1777, 16 L.Ed.2d 882 (1966).

Similarly, it is clear that resolution of the question of retroactivity does not automatically turn on the particular provision of the Constitution on which the new prescription is based. "Each constitutional rule of criminal procedure has its own distinct functions, its own background of precedent, and its own impact on the administration of justice, and the way in which these factors combine must inevitably vary with the dictate involved." Id., at 728, 86 S.Ct., at 1778. Accordingly, the test con-

sistently employed by the Court to decide whether a new constitutional doctrine should be applied retroactively contemplates the consideration of three criteria: "(a) the purpose to be served by the new standards, (b) the extent of the reliance by law enforcement authorities on the old standards, and (c) the effect on the administration of justice of a retroactive application of the new standards." Stovall v. Denno, 388 U.S. 293, 297, 87 S.Ct. 1967, 1970, 18 L.Ed.2d 1199 (1967).

Moreover, our decisions establish that "[f]oremost among these factors is the purpose to be served by the new constitutional rule," Desist v. United States, 394 U.S. 244, 249, 89 S.Ct. 1030, 1033, 22 L.Ed.2d 248 (1969), and that we will give controlling significance to the measure of reliance and the impact on the administration of justice "only when the purpose of the rule in question [does] not clearly favor either retroactivity or prospectivity." Id., at 251, 89 S.Ct., at 1035; Michigan v. Payne, 412 U.S. 47, 55, 93 S.Ct. 1966, 1970, 36 L.Ed.2d 736 (1973); see also Hankerson v. North Carolina, 432 U.S. 233, 242-244, 97 S.Ct. 2339, 2345, 53...