# United States v. Johnson

> Supreme Court of the United States · June 21, 1982 · 457 U.S. 537

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9428845

## Case

- **Full name:** United States v. Johnson
- **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States
- **Decided:** June 21, 1982
- **Citations:** 457 U.S. 537; 50 U.S.L.W. 4742; 102 S. Ct. 2579; 73 L. Ed. 2d 202; 1982 U.S. LEXIS 134
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Brennan
- **Judges:** Blackmun, Brennan, Marshall, Powell, Stevens, White, Burger, Rehnquist, O'Connor
- **Cited by:** 829 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- **Yellow flag:** Reported abrogated in part by Griffith v. Kentucky, 479 U.S. 314 (1987) — not on the Supreme Court's list.
- Negative treatments: 1
- Distinguished by: 1
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9428845

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- stating it “express[ed] no view on the retroactive application of decisions construing any constitutional provision other than the Fourth Amendment[,]” and that it was not “address[ing] the retroactive reach of our Fourth Amendment to those cases that still may raise Fourth Am…
- recognizing that full retroactivity is a necessary adjunct to the ruling that a trial court lacked authority to convict or punish a criminal defendant in the first place based on the notion that the prior inconsistent judgments or sentences were void ab initio.
- concluding that there is no real question as to whether a decision applies retroactively when it merely applies settled precedent to different factual situations because in such a case it would be a foregone conclusion that the rule of the earlier case applies
- holding that because defendant “only emerged under circumstances of extreme coercion, the arrest occurred while he was still inside his trailer.”
- recognizing that the same rule applies to “analogous federal cases under 28 U.S.C. § 2255”

## Opinion text

Justice Brennan,
concurring.
I join the Court’s opinion on my understanding that the decision leaves undisturbed our retroactivity precedents as ap *564 plied to convictions final at the time of decision. See, e. g., Stovall v. Denno, 388 U. S. 293 (1967).

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9428845. Public record. Not legal advice.