Section 11-735

Citation: Section 11-735 4.
Parent Document: Mendes v. Johnson, 389 A.2d 781 (1978)
Jurisdiction: DC (municipal)
Effective Date: 1978-06-13
Original Source: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/2073911/mendes-v-johnson/ ↗

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4. Fear of burdening the administration of justice with retroactive changes in the law. Operative in criminal as well as civil cases, this factor has assumed great importance in determining the degree of retroactivity of overruling decisions. Courts are acutely aware of the potential impact on the judicial system that retrospective application of such decisions, requiring relitigation of cases already decided under prior rules, would have and, consequently, have been reluctant to disturb settled cases. Thus, in the criminal and civil contexts, courts tend to balance the importance of the rights or interests at issue with the burden on the system of administering the new rule retroactively. See Simpson v. Union Oil Co., supra at 902-04. For example, it has been stated that a new rule of criminal law should be applied retroactively where the subject of the rule is a right so fundamental that it implicates the integrity of the fact-finding process and the basic fairness of the trial and thus necessarily casts doubt on results reached under the old rule. E. g., United States v. LaVallee, 330 F.2d 303 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 377 U.S. 998, 84 S.Ct. 1921, 12 L.Ed.2d 1048 (1964) (applying right to counsel holding in Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335, 83 S.Ct. 792, 9 L.Ed.2d 799 (1963), retroactively). However, where a criminal rule has as its basic purpose deterrence of illegal police action, retroactive application would not serve the objective of the rule. E. g., Linkletter v. Walker, supra, and United States ex rel. Angelet v. Fay, 333 F.2d 12 (2d Cir. 1964), aff'd sub nom. Angelet v. Fay, 381 U.S. 654, 85 S.Ct. 1750, 14 L.Ed.2d 623 (1965) (refusing to apply the Mapp v. Ohio, supra, exclusionary rule retrospectively to collateral attacks on state court convictions finally decided prior to Mapp).

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