Instructions: In this task, you will be shown a prompt from a judicial decision and multiple holding statements derived from citations following text in a legal decision. Holdings represent the governing legal rule when the law is applied to a particular set of facts. There are five answer choices for each citing text. The correct answer is the holding statement that corresponds to the citing text. The four incorrect answers are other holding statements. You should find the correct option. There is a <HOLDING> token in the position of the citing text prompt where the holding statement was extracted.
Input: penalty would not be administered in an arbitrary or random manner"). Permitting the jury to consider the disparate sentences pursued against equally guilty defendants would also be in keeping with Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U.S. 586, 604, 98 S.Ct. 2954, 57 L.Ed.2d 973 (1978), which held that the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments require that capital juries not be precluded from considering, as mitigating factors, any aspects of a defendant's character or of "the circumstances of the offense that the defendant proffers as a basis for a sentence less than death." Although the Ninth Circuit has held that a trial court does not violate Lockett by failing to permit consideration of co-defendant sentences as a mitigating factor, it did so in a case where the defendant facing the death penalty 4 (<HOLDING>). Where the prosecution has conceded that it
Holding statements: (A) holding that a sentencer must not be precluded from considering any of the circumstances of the offense that the defendant proffers (B) holding that juries may not be precluded from considering as a mitigating factor any aspect of a defendants character or record and any of the circumstances of the offense that the defendant proffers emphasis in original (C) holding that sentencing scheme that permitted a limited range of mitigating evidence was unconstitutional because the eighth and fourteenth amendments require that the sentencer not be precluded from considering as a mitigating factor any aspect of a defendants character or record and any of the circumstances of the offense that the defendant proffers as a basis for a sentence less than death (D) holding that a trial court must not preclude the jury from considering any aspect of the defendants character or circumstances as a mitigating factor (E) holding that any relevant mitigating evidence concerning a defendants character should not be excluded
Output:
(B)