Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 145.0

524US1

Unit: $U76

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100

HOPKINS v. REEVES

Opinion of the Court

Enmund as essentially requiring the States to alter their
deﬁnitions of felony murder to include a mens rea require-
ment with respect to the killing.8
In Cabana v. Bullock, 474
U. S. 376 (1986), however, we rejected precisely such a read-
ing and stated that “our ruling in Enmund does not concern
the guilt or innocence of the defendant––it establishes no
new elements of the crime of murder that must be found by
the jury” and “does not affect the state’s deﬁnition of any
Id., at 385 (internal quotation marks
substantive offense.”
and citation omitted). For this reason, we held that a State
could comply with Enmund’s requirement at sentencing or
even on appeal. See 474 U. S., at 392. Accordingly, Tison
and Enmund do not affect the showing that a State must
make at a defendant’s trial for felony murder, so long as their
requirement is satisﬁed at some point thereafter. As such,
these cases cannot override state-law determinations of
when instructions on lesser included offenses are permissible
and when they are not.

Finally, respondent argues that the Nebraska Supreme
Court’s longstanding interpretation that felony murder has
no lesser included homicide offenses is arbitrary because, in
his view, it is based only on recitations from prior cases,
rather than on application of the lesser included offense tests
in place since his conviction. See Brief for Respondent 40–
43. This 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. See Neb. Rev.
Stat. §§ 28–303, 28–304 (1995).
It appears that the Ne-
braska Supreme Court has not undertaken respondent’s sug-
gested analysis with respect to unlawful act manslaughter––
unintentional killing, committed in the perpetration of an
unlawful act. See § 28–305. On his direct appeal, however,
respondent did not challenge the Nebraska Supreme Court’s

8 The dissent also appears to be of this view, contending that Nebraska’s
justiﬁcation for not providing an instruction on second-degree murder is
inapplicable when the death penalty is sought. See post, at 101–102.