Binding Authority — Retroactivity of New Decision — “New” Rule of Law

State v. Olayinka Kazeem Lagundoye, 2004 WI 4, affirming2003 WI App 63, 260 Wis. 2d 805, 659 N.W.2d 501

For Lagundoye: Geoffrey Y. Muwonge

Issue/Holding:

¶26. Likewise, it is clear that under Wisconsin’s formulation of the Teague doctrine, the rule we announced in Douangmala was “new.” “‘[A] case announces a new rule if the result was not dictated by precedent existing at the time the defendant’s conviction became final.'” State v. Lo, 2003 WI 107, ¶62 n.1, 264 Wis. 2d 1, 665 N.W.2d 756 (quoting Teague, 489 U.S. at 301) (emphasis in original). The proper inquiry is not whether a case implicated an “old notion.” Dissent, ¶70. Rather,

“a case announces a new rule if its outcome was susceptible to debate among reasonable minds, or if a contrary result would not have been an illogical or even a grudging application of prior precedent.” In contrast, a case extends an old rule only if its holding is “compelled or dictated by existing precedent.”

Horton, 195 Wis. 2d at 291 (citations omitted). Therefore, the pertinent question is not whether the issue or question before the court was pre-existing, dissent, ¶59, but whether the court’s holding or the rule it announced adhered to precedent on a pre-existing issue.¶27. The result in Douangmala was not dictated by precedent; it overruled a line of precedent applying the harmless-error analysis to violations of § 971.08(1)(c).…

It isn’t determinative that the “new” holding is “based on the plain language of” the construed statute; nor, for that matter, that the holding relates to a statute’s interpretation, ¶¶28-29.

Finality of a criminal case is defined as follows, ¶20: “A case is final if the prosecution is no longer pending, a judgment or conviction has been entered, the right to a state court appeal from a final judgment has been exhausted, and time for certiorari review in the United States Supreme Court has expired.” Note, additionally, that failure to file a notice of intent to pursue postconviction relief means that the “right to a direct appeal [has] expired.” Id. n. 13.)

Note “that while a State is free as a matter of its own law to impose greater restrictions on police activity than those this Court holds to be necessary upon federal constitutional standards, it may not impose such greater restrictions as a matter of federal constitutional lawwhen this Court specifically refrains from imposing them.” Arkansas v. Sullivan, 532 US 769, 772 (2001).