Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 133.0

524US1

Unit: $U76

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88

OCTOBER TERM, 1997

Syllabus

HOPKINS, WARDEN v. REEVES

certiorari to the united states court of appeals for
the eighth circuit

No. 96–1693. Argued February 23, 1998—Decided June 8, 1998

Respondent was indicted on two counts of felony murder under Nebraska
law. The Nebraska ﬁrst-degree murder statute deﬁnes felony murder
as murder committed in the perpetration of certain enumerated felonies,
including, as relevant here, sexual assault and attempt to commit sexual
assault in the ﬁrst degree. Under Nebraska law, intent to kill is conclu-
sively presumed if the State proves intent to commit the underlying
felony. A felony-murder conviction makes a defendant eligible for the
death penalty, which in Nebraska is imposed judicially, not by the trial
jury. The trial court refused respondent’s request to instruct the jury
on second-degree murder and manslaughter on the ground that the
State Supreme Court consistently has held that these crimes are not
lesser included offenses of felony murder. Respondent’s jury then con-
victed him on both felony-murder counts, and a three-judge panel sen-
tenced him to death. After exhausting his state remedies, respondent
ﬁled a federal habeas corpus petition, claiming, inter alia, that the trial
court’s failure to give the requested instructions was unconstitutional
under Beck v. Alabama, 447 U. S. 625, in which this Court invalidated
an Alabama law that prohibited lesser included offense instructions in
capital cases, when lesser included offenses to the charged crime existed
under state law and such instructions were generally given in noncapital
cases. The District Court granted relief on an unrelated due process
claim, which the Eighth Circuit rejected. However, the Eighth Circuit
also held that, in failing to give the requested instructions, the trial
court had committed the same constitutional error as that in Beck.

Held: Beck does not require state trial courts to instruct juries on offenses
that are not lesser included offenses of the charged crime under state
law. Pp. 94–101.

(a) Beck is distinguishable from this case in two critical respects: The
Alabama statute prohibited instructions on offenses that state law
clearly recognized as lesser included offenses of the charged crime, and
it did so only in capital cases. Alabama thus erected an artiﬁcial barrier
that restricted its juries to a choice between conviction for a capital
offense and acquittal. By contrast, when the Nebraska trial court de-
clined to give the requested instructions, it merely followed the State
Supreme Court’s 100-year-old rule that second-degree murder and man-