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.

argument resulted in prejudicial ineffective assistance of counsel. The record fairly supports the California Supreme Court's summary denial of this claim. Claim 2i is denied on the merits. 1. & m. INTER-CASE AND IN-TRA-CASE PROPORTIONALITY Hamilton asserts defense counsel's failure to research and demonstrate that the death penalty was excessive based on inter-case and intra-case proportionality, compared to sentences in similar cases and compared to his alleged accomplices, resulted in ineffective assistance of counsel. Hamilton does not make any offer of proof or showing which indicates defense counsel's failure to research this issue resulted in ineffective assistance of counsel. This claim is foreclosed by Pulley v. Harris, 465 U.S. 37, 53, 104 S.Ct. 871, 79 L.Ed.2d 29 (1984) (<HOLDING>). The record fairly supports the California
Holding statements: (A) holding the jurys finding of a special circumstance with automatic review by the trial judge and the california supreme court sufficiently limits the risk of arbitrariness and capriciousness without comparative proportionality review (B) holding the issue of recusal of the trial judge to be preserved for appellate review must be raised in the trial court (C) holding that the supreme court has final appellate review of agency decisions (D) holding that it was error for the trial judge to answer a jurys question without giving defendants counsel an opportunity to be heard before the trial judge responded (E) holding that the ninth circuit is bound by the california supreme courts interpretation of california law
(A)