Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 134.0

524US1

Unit: $U76

[09-06-00 18:29:27] PAGES PGT: OPIN

Cite as: 524 U. S. 88 (1998)

89

Syllabus

slaughter are not lesser included offenses of felony murder. The trial
court neither created an artiﬁcial barrier for the jury nor treated capital
and noncapital cases differently. By ignoring these distinctions, the
Eighth Circuit limited the State’s prerogative to structure its criminal
law more severely than does the rule in Beck, for it required in effect
that States create lesser included offenses to all capital crimes when no
such offense exists under state law. Pp. 94–97.

(b) The Eighth Circuit again overlooked signiﬁcant distinctions be-
tween this case and Beck when it found that there was a distortion of
the factﬁnding process because respondent’s jury had been forced into
an all-or-nothing choice between capital murder and innocence. The
fact that Beck’s jury was told that if it convicted him of the charged
offense it must impose the death penalty threatened to make the issue
at trial whether he should be executed or not, and not whether he was
guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The distortion of the trial process
carried over to sentencing because an Alabama jury unwilling to acquit
had no choice but to impose death. These factors are not present here.
Respondent’s jury did not impose sentence, and the sentencing panel’s
alternative to death was not setting respondent free, but rather sentenc-
ing him to life imprisonment. Moreover, respondent’s proposed in-
structions would have introduced another kind of distortion at trial, for
they would have allowed the jury to ﬁnd beyond a reasonable doubt
elements that the State, having assumed the obligation of proving only
one crime, had not attempted to prove and indeed had ignored during
trial. Pp. 98–99.

(c) The requirement of Tison v. Arizona, 481 U. S. 137, and Enmund
v. Florida, 458 U. S. 782, that a culpable mental state with respect to
the killing be proved before the death penalty may be imposed for fel-
ony murder does not affect the showing that a State must make at a
defendant’s felony-murder trial, so long as the requirement is satisﬁed
at some point thereafter, such as at sentencing or on appeal. Cabana
v. Bullock, 474 U. S. 376, 385, 392. As such, these cases cannot override
state-law determinations of when instructions on lesser included of-
fenses are permissible and when they are not. Respondent’s argument
that the Nebraska Supreme Court’s longstanding interpretation that fel-
ony murder has no lesser included homicide offenses is arbitrary is with-
out merit. That contention is certainly strained with respect to the
crime of second-degree murder, which requires proof of intent to kill,
while felony murder does not; respondent did not present such a chal-
lenge with respect to manslaughter to the Nebraska Supreme Court,
and therefore that claim is not considered here. Pp. 99–101.

102 F. 3d 977, reversed.