Williams v. United States
Is it still good law? What later courts have actually done to this case.
Status
More on how this was screened
Griffith v. Kentucky rejected the clear break exception that Williams used to deny a new criminal procedure rule to a defendant whose conviction was not yet final. Griffith did not decide the separate rule for convictions already final and challenged through collateral review. The confirmed treatment is listed below.
30 later cases cite Williams v. United States; 30 of those citations sat close to treatment language and were flagged for reading, and all of them have been read. Citations that did not sit near treatment language were not flagged and were not read one by one, so a court that weakened this case without using any of that language would not appear here.
Relying on Williams v. United States?
This page shows what later courts did to it. Ask about your specific facts and see whether it still carries your argument, with citations you can check.
Treatments
Overruled in part
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The Supreme Court rejected Williams's clear break exception and required new criminal procedure rules to apply to every conviction still pending on direct review.
Griffith v. Kentucky · Supreme Court of the United States · filed
the Court’s express threshold determination that the ‘“new” constitutional interpretatio[n] ... so change[s] the law that prospectivity is arguably the proper course,’ Williams v. United States, 401 U. S., at 659 (plurality opinion). ... Thus, we recognized what may be termed a “clear break exception.” Under this exception, a new constitutional rule was not applied retroactively, even to cases on direct review, if the new rule explicitly overruled a past precedent of this Court, or disapproved a practice this Court had arguably sanctioned in prior cases, or overturned a longstanding practice that lower courts had uniformly approved. ... We therefore hold that a new rule for the conduct of criminal prosecutions is to be applied retroactively to all cases, state or federal, pending on direct review or not yet final, with no exception for cases in which the new rule constitutes a “clear break” with the past.
Read the full opinion on CourtListener →
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