## Facts

- Wilbert K. Rogers stabbed James Bowdery in the heart in May 1994.
- Bowdery suffered cardiac arrest during surgery, sustained cerebral hypoxia, and entered a coma.
- Bowdery remained comatose and died on August 7, 1995—about 15 months after the stabbing—from a kidney infection arising as a complication of the coma.
- The medical examiner attributed the death to cerebral hypoxia secondary to the stab wound.
- Rogers was convicted of second-degree murder under a Tennessee homicide statute defining criminal homicide as “the unlawful killing of another person,” without mentioning the common-law year-and-a-day rule.
- On appeal, Rogers argued that the year-and-a-day rule barred a murder conviction because the victim died more than a year and a day after the stabbing.
- The Tennessee Supreme Court abolished the year-and-a-day rule in Tennessee common law and applied that abolition to uphold Rogers’s conviction.

## Issues

1. Whether retroactive application of a state court decision abolishing the common-law year-and-a-day rule violates the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause.
2. What due process limit applies to retroactive judicial changes to common-law criminal doctrines.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court affirmed in a 5–4 decision.
- The Court held that the Due Process Clause does not incorporate the Ex Post Facto Clause’s legislative limits and apply them identically to courts.
- The Court applied a due process “fair warning” test: a judicial change violates due process only if it is “unexpected and indefensible by reference to the law which had been expressed prior to the conduct in issue.”
- The Court concluded Tennessee’s abolition of the year-and-a-day rule, and its application to Rogers, was a foreseeable and defensible development of common law.
- The Court emphasized that the year-and-a-day rule functioned as an evidentiary/causation proxy tied to outdated forensic limits, not as a modern statutory element or fixed substantive limitation.
- The Court noted the absence of statutory codification of the rule in Tennessee and the lack of modern Tennessee precedent applying it in a reported murder case.
- The Court also relied on the widespread abandonment of the rule in other jurisdictions as supporting the reasonableness and predictability of Tennessee’s change.

## Legal Principles

- The Ex Post Facto Clause constrains legislatures; retroactive judicial decisionmaking is reviewed under due process “fair warning” limits rather than ex post facto categories.
- A retroactive judicial change in criminal law violates due process only when it is “unexpected and indefensible” in light of the law expressed before the defendant’s conduct.
- State courts may develop and revise common-law criminal doctrines, including abolition of anachronistic causation proxies, when the change is consistent with prior law’s direction and contemporary legal understanding.
- In assessing fair warning, courts may consider statutory text, the existence (or absence) of controlling state precedent, and broader legal trends bearing on whether the defendant could reasonably anticipate the change.

## Conclusion

The Court held that Tennessee’s retroactive abolition of the year-and-a-day rule did not deny due process because the change was a defensible and reasonably foreseeable evolution of common-law homicide doctrine, rather than an unexpected expansion of criminal liability.


Rogers v. Tennessee, 532 U.S. 451 (2001)