Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 144.0

524US1

Unit: $U76

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

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

99

Opinion of the Court

setting respondent free, but rather sentencing him to life
imprisonment.7

Moreover, respondent’s proposed instructions would have
introduced another kind of distortion at trial. Nebraska
proceeded against respondent only on a theory of felony mur-
der, a crime that under state law has no lesser included homi-
cide offenses. The State therefore assumed the obligation
of proving only that crime, as well as any lesser included
offenses that existed under state law and were supported by
the evidence; its entire case focused solely on that obligation.
To allow respondent to be convicted of homicide offenses that
are not lesser included offenses of felony murder, therefore,
would be to allow his jury to ﬁnd beyond a reasonable doubt
elements that the State had not attempted to prove, and in-
deed that it had ignored during the course of trial. This can
hardly be said to be a reliable result: “Where no lesser in-
cluded offense exists, a lesser included offense instruction
detracts from, rather than enhances, the rationality of the
process.” Spaziano v. Florida, supra, at 455.

The Court of Appeals also erroneously relied upon our de-
cisions in Tison v. Arizona, 481 U. S. 137 (1987), and En-
mund v. Florida, 458 U. S. 782 (1982), to support its holding.
It reasoned that because those cases require proof of a culpa-
ble mental state with respect to the killing before the death
penalty may be imposed for felony murder, Nebraska could
not refuse lesser included offense instructions on the ground
that the only intent required for a felony-murder conviction
is the intent to commit the underlying felony. See 102 F. 3d,
In so doing, the Court of Appeals read Tison and
at 984.

7 We are not, of course, presented with a case that differs from Beck
only in that the jury is not the sentencer, and we express no opinion
here whether that difference alone would render Beck inapplicable. The
crucial distinction between Beck and this case, as noted, is the distinction
between a State’s prohibiting instructions on offenses that state law recog-
nizes as lesser included, and a State’s refusing to instruct on offenses that
state law does not recognize as lesser included.