One-man grand jury law; MCL 767.3 & MCL 767.4; Principle that defendants charged under the one-man grand jury law are entitled to a preliminary exam & that a judge serving as a one-person grand jury may not issue a criminal indictment; People v Peeler; Whether Peeler applies retroactively; Subject-matter jurisdiction; MCL 600.601; People v Washington; New rule of law & retroactivity threshold; League of Women Voters v Secretary of State; Retroactivity on collateral review & successive motions for relief from judgment; MCR 6.502(G)(2)(a); People v Barnes; Linkletter-Hampton factors; People v Hampton; Linkletter v Walker

The court held that Peeler errors do not implicate a circuit court’s subject-matter jurisdiction and that Peeler does not apply retroactively on collateral review, while also holding that Peeler did announce a new rule of law. In 2012, a circuit judge acting as a one-man grand jury filed an indictment charging defendant with open murder and felony-firearm. He was convicted by a jury of first-degree premeditated murder and felony-firearm after the trial court denied his request for a preliminary exam. The trial court later denied his second motion for relief from judgment, ruling among other things that Peeler was not retroactive. The Court of Appeals affirmed in a published opinion, ruling that Peeler does not implicate subject-matter jurisdiction or apply retroactively on collateral review, and did not announce a new rule of law. On appeal, the court held that the Peeler violation did not deprive the circuit court of subject-matter jurisdiction because “subject-matter jurisdiction ‘is the right of the court to exercise jurisdiction over a class of cases, such as criminal cases[,]’” and “improper charging documents do not implicate a circuit court’s subject-matter jurisdiction.” Thus, “the fact that the charging procedure was erroneous . . . did not implicate the circuit court’s subject-matter jurisdiction.” The court also found that Peeler does not apply retroactively on collateral review, explaining that “‘judicial decisions which express new rules normally are not applied retroactively to other cases that have become final.’” It found that the Court of Appeals erred in saying Peeler was not new because it ended an “‘unchallenged assumption’” and “decided ‘an issue of first impression . . . which was not adumbrated by any earlier appellate decision.’” But the court concluded Peeler “did not announce a new substantive rule of constitutional law” because it “concerned the process of getting to trial” and the holding “was ‘statutory,’ not constitutional.” As a result, the federal test for retroactive application was not met. It also did not apply retroactively on state-law grounds under the Linkletter-Hampton factors. The court affirmed the Court of Appeals’ affirmance of the trial court’s denial of defendant’s second motion for relief from judgment but vacated its “analysis holding that Peeler did not announce a new rule of law.”