86
Thomas, J., dissenting
314 (1987), the Court remands this case without deciding whether the ultimate judgment below, despite the error, was correct. In my view, the lower court's judgment upholding petitioner's conviction was correct under settled legal principles, and therefore should be affirmed.
I
The petition for certiorari in this case presented a single question for review—namely, whether a particular decision of this Court concerning criminal procedure should apply retroactively to all cases pending on direct review. This question was well settled at the time the petition was filed, and had been since our decision in Griffith, in which we stated 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." 479 U. S., at 328. The Nevada Supreme Court made a statement to the contrary in a footnote in its opinion. See infra, at 87. Notwithstanding this obvious mistake, Griffith's rule of retroactivity had generated little or no confusion among the lower courts. In my view, under these circumstances, the writ was improvidently granted.
According to this Court's Rule 10.1, "[a] petition for a writ of certiorari will be granted only when there are special and important reasons therefor." Not only were there no special or important reasons favoring review in this case, but, as Justice Stewart once wrote: "The only remarkable thing about this case is its presence in this Court. For the case involves no more than the application of well-settled principles to a familiar situation, and has little significance except for the [parties]." Butz v. Glover Livestock Commission Co., 411 U. S. 182, 189 (1973) (dissenting opinion). As the Court has observed in the past, "it is very important that we be consistent in not granting the writ of certiorari except in cases involving principles the settlement of which is of importance to the public as distinguished from that of the
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