When a criminal statute is struck down as unconstitutional, what happens to people who were convicted under it?

Question

We just had a question about what happens to convicts if a law is repealed. However, that question's example of homosexual behavior wasn't decriminalized in the US by legislative action, but rather by the Supreme Court ruling the laws unconstitutional in Lawrence v. Texas.

Court decisions certainly do have some retroactive effect -- even though Lawrence's actions occurred before the ruling, he couldn't be sent to jail for them. So if you were convicted under some law but that law was later struck down in a different case, do you go free? Does it matter what stage the trial was at (e.g. final judgment with appeals exhausted vs. on appeal vs. in trial court)? Does it matter if you had challenged the law's constitutionality?

Please cite answers.

Answer 1

Here's how it works:

1. You are charged with a crime.
2. You are tried, found guilty on the facts and the law and sentenced.
3. You appeal on the law, if you win you are free, if you lose you aren't.
4. You appeal to a higher court: ditto.
5. Ultimately your appeal ends in a petition to the Supreme Court and they will either hear the appeal or not, if they do: ditto.

Now, if you reach the end of this process and lose, you are guilty and the punishment will be imposed.

If latter, somebody else who is making their way through this process on similar facts gets a ruling in their favour then they are not guilty, too bad for you - your case has been finalized and you are done.

However, If that ruling is that a law is invalid for whatever reason (including but not necessarily unconstitutionality) then there was no law under which you could be tried so pack your bags you're going home.

Answer 2

I have to go off-topic a little, because I am not aware of any legal authority for the proposition that a properly convicted defendant's conviction or sentence is automatically quashed, if the law by which he was convicted is overturned.

I can really see the likelihood of the Supreme Court striking down the statutory provision making murder, arson, robbery with violence, or income tax evasion an offence -- I don't think!

In the unlikely event of a criminal offence being declared unconstitutional, I expect it would be up to the defendant to petition the court which convicted him for an order quashing either his conviction or his sentence. And both conviction and sentence would most likely stand, unless and until such an order was granted.

In the event of a statutory repeal, the statute which introduces the repeal always states the date from which the offence no longer exists, but that date rarely or never precedes the date on which the statute becomes law.

I seriously doubt the courts would ever invalidate a crime that has been such since time immemorial. The most likely case would be some recent and contraversial proposal, made into law but violating some obscure clause of the US constitution, a recent change under which very few people were ever convicted.