D.R.I.: Carpenter procedural and not substantive and not a “new rule” under Teague

Carpenter is not entitled to retroactive application to post-conviction cases under Teague. It is procedural, not substantive. United States v. Sandoval, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 11281 (D.R.I. Jan. 23, 2020):

The Supreme Court has stated that:

When a decision of this Court results in a new rule, that rule applies to all criminal cases still pending on direct review. As to convictions that are already final, however, the rule applies only in limited circumstances. New substantive rules generally apply retroactively. This includes decisions that narrow the scope of a criminal statute by interpreting its terms, as well as constitutional determinations that place particular conduct or persons covered by the statute beyond the State’s power to punish. Such rules apply retroactively because they necessarily carry a significant risk that a defendant stands convicted of an act that the law does not make criminal or faces a punishment that the law cannot impose upon him.

New rules of procedure, on the other hand, generally do not apply retroactively. They do not produce a class of persons convicted of conduct the law does not make criminal, but merely raise the possibility that someone convicted with use of the invalidated procedural might have been acquitted otherwise. Because of this more speculative connection to innocence, we give retroactive effect to only a small set of watershed rules of criminal procedure implicating the fundamental fairness and accuracy of the criminal proceeding. That a new procedural rule is fundamental in some abstract sense is not enough; the rule must be one without which the likelihood of an accurate conviction is seriously diminished. This class of rules is extremely narrow, and it is unlikely that any … ha[s] yet to emerge.

Schriro v. Summerlin, 542 U.S. 348, 351-52 (2004) (alterations in original) (internal citations, quotation marks, and footnote omitted); see also Bousley v. United States, 523 U.S. 614, 619-21 (1998); Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288, 310-313 (1989). In short,

“[a] rule is substantive rather than procedural if it alters the range of conduct or the class of persons that the law punishes. In contrast, rules that regulate only the manner of determining the defendant’s culpability are procedural.” Schriro, 542 U.S. at 353 (internal citations omitted).
Here, the Supreme Court’s decision in Carpenter announced a procedural, not substantive rule. The decision does not “alter[] the range of conduct or the class of persons that the law punishes.” Id. Rather, the rule “regulate[s] only the manner of determining the defendant’s culpability . . . ,” id., by requiring the Government to obtain a warrant “[b]efore compelling a wireless carrier to turn over a subscriber’s CSLI,” Carpenter, 138 S.Ct. at 2221. Therefore, the new rule is procedural. See Schriro, 542 U.S. at 353.

Nor can the rule announced in Carpenter be considered a “watershed rule[] of criminal procedure implicating the fundamental fairness and accuracy of the criminal proceeding.” Id. at 352 (internal quotation marks omitted). As noted above, “[t]his class of rules is extremely narrow” id., and only includes rules “without which the likelihood of an accurate conviction is seriously diminished,” id. (quoting Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288, 290 (1989).

Because the Carpenter decision announced a procedural, not substantive, rule, as such, it is not retroactively applicable to cases on collateral review. See id. Accordingly, it cannot serve to extend the statute of limitations under § 2255(f)(3).