Task: sc_authoritydecision

What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the bases on which the Supreme Court rested its decision with regard to the legal provision that the Court considered in the case. Consider "judicial review (national level)" if the majority determined the constitutionality of some action taken by some unit or official of the federal government, including an interstate compact. Consider "judicial review (state level)" if the majority determined the constitutionality of some action taken by some unit or official of a state or local government. Consider "statutory construction" for cases where the majority interpret a federal statute, treaty, or court rule; if the Court interprets a federal statute governing the powers or jurisdiction of a federal court; if the Court construes a state law as incompatible with a federal law; or if an administrative official interprets a federal statute. Do not consider "statutory construction" where an administrative agency or official acts "pursuant to" a statute, unless the Court interprets the statute to determine if administrative action is proper. Consider "interpretation of administrative regulation or rule, or executive order" if the majority treats federal administrative action in arriving at its decision.Consider "diversity jurisdiction" if the majority said in approximately so many words that under its diversity jurisdiction it is interpreting state law. Consider "federal common law" if the majority indicate that it used a judge-made "doctrine" or "rule; if the Court without more merely specifies the disposition the Court has made of the case and cites one or more of its own previously decided cases unless the citation is qualified by the word "see."; if the case concerns admiralty or maritime law, or some other aspect of the law of "             nations other than a treaty; if the case concerns the retroactive application of a constitutional provision or a previous decision of the Court; if the case concerns an exclusionary rule, the harmless error rule (though not the statute), the abstention doctrine, comity, res judicata, or collateral estoppel; or if the case concerns a "rule" or "doctrine" that is not specified as related to or connected with a constitutional or statutory provision. Consider "Supreme Court supervision of lower federal or state courts or original jurisdiction" otherwise (i.e., the residual code); for issues pertaining to non-statutorily based Judicial Power topics; for cases arising under the Court's original jurisdiction; in cases in which the Court denied or dismissed the petition for review or where the decision of a lower court is affirmed by a tie vote; or in workers' compensation litigation involving statutory interpretation and, in addition, a discussion of jury determination and/or the sufficiency of the evidence.

Justice Stevens
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Petitioner Jalil Abdul-Kabir, formerly known as Ted Calvin Cole, contends that there is a reasonable likelihood that the trial judge’s instructions to the Texas jury that sentenced him to death prevented jurors from giving meaningful consideration to constitutionally relevant mitigating evidence. He further contends that the judgment of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA) denying his application for postconviction relief on November 24, 1999, misapplied the law as clearly established by earlier decisions of this Court, thereby warranting relief under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), 28 U. S. C. § 2254. We agree with both contentions. Although the relevant state-court judgment for purposes of our review under AEDPA is that adjudicating the merits of Cole’s state habeas application, in which these claims were properly raised, we are persuaded that the same result would be dictated by those cases decided before the state trial court entered its judgment affirming Cole’s death sentence on September 26, 1990. Accordingly, we reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
I
In December 1987, Cole, his stepbrother Michael Hickey, and Michael’s wife, Kelly, decided to rob and kill Kelly’s grandfather, Raymond Richardson, to obtain some cash. Two days later they did so. Cole strangled Richardson with a dog leash; the group then searched the house and found $20 that they used to purchase beer and food. The next day, Michael and Kelly surrendered to the police and confessed. The police then arrested Cole who also confessed.
Cole was tried by a jury and convicted of capital murder. After a sentencing hearing, the jury was asked to answer two special issues:.
“Was the conduct of the defendant, TED CALVIN COLE, that caused the death of the deceased, RAYMOND C. RICHARDSON, committed deliberately and with the reasonable expectation that the death of the deceased or another would result?
“Is there a probability that the defendant, TED CALVIN COLE, would commit criminal acts of violence that would constitute a continuing threat to society?” App. 127,128.
The trial judge instructed the jury to take into consideration evidence presented at the guilt phase as well as the sentencing phase of the trial but made no reference to mitigating evidence. Under the provisions of the Texas criminal code, the jury’s affirmative answers to these two special issues required the judge to impose a death sentence. See Tex. Code Crim. Proc. Ann., Art. 37.071 (Vernon 2006).
At the sentencing hearing, the State introduced evidence that Cole pleaded guilty to an earlier murder when he was only 16. Shortly after being released on parole, Cole pleaded guilty to charges of aggravated sexual assault on two boys and was sentenced to 15 more years in prison. As evidence of Cole’s propensity for future dangerousness, the State introduced Cole’s diary which, according to the State’s expert psychiatrist, Dr. Richard Coons, revealed a compulsive attraction to young boys and an obsession with criminal activity. Dr. Coons described Cole as a sociopath who lacked remorse and would not profit or learn from his experiences.
In response, Cole presented two categories of mitigating evidence. The first consisted of testimony from his mother and his aunt, who described his unhappy childhood. Cole’s parents lived together “off and on” for 10 years, over the course of which they had two children, Cole, and his younger sister, Carla. App. 35. Shortly after Cole was born, his father was arrested for robbing a liquor store. Cole’s father deserted the family several times, abandoning the family completely before Cole was five years old. On the last occasion that Cole saw his father, he dropped Cole off a block from where he thought Cole’s mother lived, told Cole to “go find her,” and drove off. Id., at 42. Cole had no contact with his father during the next 10 years. Ibid. After Cole’s father left, his mother found herself unable to care for Cole and his sister and took the children to live with her parents in Oklahoma. Cole’s grandparents were both alcoholics — Cole’s mother was herself a self-described “drunk”— and lived miles away from other children. Eventually, because Cole’s grandparents did not want their daughter or her children living with them, Cole’s mother placed him in a church-run children’s home, although she kept her daughter with her. Over the next five years Cole’s mother visited him only twice. Cole’s aunt, who visited him on holidays, testified that Cole seemed incapable of expressing any emotion and that his father never visited him at all.
The second category of mitigating evidence came from two expert witnesses — a psychologist and the former chief mental health officer for the Texas Department of Corrections— who discussed the consequences of Cole’s childhood neglect and abandonment. Dr. Jarvis Wright, the psychologist, spent 8 to 10 hours interviewing Cole and administering an “extensive battery of psychological tests.” Id., at 63. He testified that Cole had “real problems with impulse control” apparently resulting from “central nervous damage” combined with “all the other factors of [his] background.” Id., at 69. He also testified that Cole had likely been depressed for much of his life, that he had a “painful” background, and that he had “never felt loved and worthwhile in his life.” Id., at 73,86. Providing an analogy for Cole’s early development, Dr. Wright stated that “the manufacturing process [had] botched the raw material horribly.” Id., at 73.
When specifically asked about future dangerousness, Dr. Wright acknowledged that “if Ted were released today on the street, there’s a much greater probability of dangerous behavior than with the rest of us.” Id., at 74. Although he acknowledged the possibility of change or “burn out,” he admitted that Cole would likely pose a threat of future dangerousness until “years from now.” Ibid. Except for his prediction that Cole would change as he grew older, Dr. Wright’s testimony did not contradict the State’s claim that Cole was a dangerous person, but instead sought to provide an explanation for his behavior that might reduce his moral culpability.
Dr. Wendell Dickerson, a psychologist who had not previously examined Cole, observed that it was difficult to predict future dangerousness, but that “violent conduct is predominantly, overwhelmingly the province of the young” with the risk of violence becoming rare as people grow older. Id., at 95. On cross-examination, in response to a hypothetical question about a person with Cole’s character and history, Dr. Dickerson acknowledged that he would be “alarmed” about the future conduct of such a person because “yes, there absolutely is a probability that they would commit... future acts of violence.” Id., at 113. In sum, the strength of Cole’s mitigating evidence was not its potential to contest his immediate dangerousness, to which end the experts’ testimony was at least as harmful as it was helpful. Instead, its strength was its tendency to prove that his violent propensities were caused by factors beyond his control — namely, neurological damage and childhood neglect and abandonment.
It was these latter considerations, however, that the prosecutor discouraged jurors from taking into account when formulating their answers to the special issues. During the voir dire, the prosecutor advised the jurors that they had a duty to answer the special issues based on the facts, and the extent to which such facts objectively supported findings of deliberateness and future dangerousness, rather than their views about what might be an appropriate punishment for this particular defendant. For example, juror Beeson was asked:
“[I]f a person had a bad upbringing, but looking at those special issues, you felt that they [sic] met the standards regarding deliberateness and being a continuing threat to society, could you still vote ‘yes,’ even though you felt like maybe they’d [sic] had a rough time as a kid? If you felt that the facts brought to you by the prosecution warranted a ‘yes’ answer, could you put that out of your mind and just go by the facts?
“[T]hat would not keep you from answering ‘yes,’ just because a person had a poor upbringing, would it?” XI Voir Dire Statement of Facts filed in No. CR88-G043-A (Dist. Ct. Tom Green Cty., Tex., 51st Jud. Dist.), p. 1588.
The prosecutor began his final closing argument with a reminder to the jury that during the voir dire they had “promised the State that, if it met its burden of proof,” they would answer “yes” to both special issues. App. 145. The trial judge refused to give any of several instructions requested by Cole that would have authorized a negative answer to either of the special issues on the basis of “any evidence which, in [the jury’s] opinion, mitigate[d] against the imposition of the Death Penalty, including any aspect of the Defendant’s character or record.” Id., at 115; see also id., at 117-124. Ultimately, the jurors answered both issues in the affirmative, and Cole was sentenced to death.
On direct appeal, the sole issue raised by Cole was that the evidence was insufficient to support the jury’s verdict. The CCA rejected Cole’s claim and affirmed the judgment of the trial court on September 26,1990.
11
On March 2, 1992, the lawyer who then represented Cole filed an application for a writ of habeas corpus in the Texas trial court, alleging 21 claims of error. Counsel later withdrew, and after delays caused in part by a letter from Cole to the trial judge stating that he wished to withdraw his “appeal,” the judge ultimately “had petitioner bench warranted” to a hearing on September 4,1998. Id., at 152-153. During that hearing, Cole advised the court that he wished to proceed with his habeas proceedings and to have the CCA appoint counsel to represent him. Without counsel having been appointed to represent Cole, and without conducting an evidentiary hearing, the trial court entered its findings and conclusions recommending denial of the application.
Three of Cole’s 21 claims related to the jury’s inability to consider mitigating evidence. The trial judge rejected the first — “that his mitigating evidence was not able to be properly considered and given effect by the jury under the special issues,” id., at 157 — because he concluded that the record, and “especially” the testimony of the two expert witnesses, “provide[d] a basis for the jury to sufficiently consider the mitigating evidence offered by petitioner,” id., at 161. With respect to Cole’s second claim, the judge agreed that appellate counsel had been ineffective for failing to assign error based on “the trial court’s failure to instruct the jury on mitigating evidence as contemplated by the Pendry [sic] decision.” Id., at 166. He nevertheless found that the result on appeal would have been the same had the point been raised. Ibid. On the third claim relating to mitigating evidence, the judge rejected Cole’s argument that the trial court’s failure to specifically instruct the jury to consider mitigating evidence and offer a definition of “mitigating” was error. Id., at 173.
Over the dissent of two members of the court, and after adopting the trial court’s findings of fact and conclusions of law with only minor changes, the CCA denied Cole’s application for state collateral relief. Ex parte Cole, No. 41,673-01 (Nov. 24, 1999) (per curiam), App. 178-179.
Ill
After the Federal District Court granted Cole’s motion for the appointment of counsel, he filed a timely petition for a federal writ of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U. S. C. § 2254. His principal claim then, as it is now, was that the sentencing jury “was unable to consider and give effect to the mitigating evidence in his case,” in violation of the Constitution. Cole v. Johnson, Civ. Action No. 6:00-CV-014-C (ND Tex., Mar. 6, 2001), p. 5, App. 184.
In its opinion denying relief, the District Court began by summarizing Cole’s mitigating evidence, highlighting his “destructive family background.” Ibid. The court then correctly described our decision in Penry I, 492 U. S. 302 (1989), in these words:
“In [Penry] the Supreme Court found that when the defendant places mitigating evidence before the jury, Texas juries must be given instructions which allow the jury to give effect to that mitigating evidence and to express its reasoned moral response to that evidence in determining whether to impose the death penalty.” Civ. Action No. 6:00-CV-014-C, at 8-9, App. 188.
The court next noted that the Fifth Circuit had formulated its own analysis for evaluating Penry claims. Under that analysis, for mitigating evidence to be constitutionally relevant, it “must show (1) a uniquely severe permanent handicap with which the defendant is burdened through no fault of his own,... and (2) that the criminal act was attributable to this severe permanent condition” Civ. Action No. 6:00— CV-014-C, at 9, App. 189 (quoting Davis v. Scott, 51 F. 3d 457, 460-461 (CA5 1995); internal quotation marks omitted; emphasis added). Ultimately, Cole’s inability to show a “nexus” between his troubled family background and his commission of capital murder doomed his Penry claim. Civ. Action No. 6:00-CV-014-C, at 13, App. 193.
The Court of Appeals denied Cole’s application for a certificate of appealability (COA), Cole v. Dretke, 99 Fed. Appx. 523 (CA5 2004), holding that “reasonable jurists would not debate the district court’s conclusion that Cole’s evidence was not constitutionally relevant mitigating evidence,” Cole v. Dretke, 418 F. 3d 494,498 (CA5 2005). Shortly thereafter, however, we held that the Fifth Circuit’s “screening test” for determining the “‘constitutional relevance’” of mitigating evidence had “no foundation in the decisions of this Court.” Tennard v. Dretke, 542 U. S. 274, 284 (2004). Accordingly, we vacated its order denying a COA in this case and remanded for further proceedings. Abdul-Kabir v. Dretke, 543 U. S. 985 (2004). On remand, the Court of Appeals reviewed Cole’s Penry claim on the merits and affirmed the District Court’s judgment denying the writ.
Focusing primarily on the testimony of petitioner’s two experts rather than that of his mother and his aunt, the Court of Appeals reviewed our recent decisions and concluded “that the Texas special issues allowed the jury to give ‘full consideration and full effect’ to the mitigating evidence that Cole presented at the punishment phase of his trial.” 418 F. 3d, at 511. With two judges dissenting, the court denied the petition for rehearing en banc. We consolidated this case with Brewer v. Quarterman, post, p. 286, and granted certiorari, 549 U. S. 974 (2006).
IV
Because Cole filed his federal habeas petition after the effective date of AEDPA, the provisions of that Act govern the scope of our review. We must therefore ask whether the CCA’s adjudication of Cole’s claim on the merits “resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States.” 28 U. S. C. § 2254(d)(1). We conclude that it did.
A careful review of our jurisprudence in this area makes clear that well before our decision in Penry I, our cases had firmly established that sentencing juries must be able to give meaningful consideration and effect to all mitigating evidence that might provide a basis for refusing to impose the death penalty on a particular individual, notwithstanding the severity of his crime or his potential to commit similar offenses in the future. Three of the five cases decided on the same day in 1976 — Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U. S. 280, Proffitt v. Florida, 428 U. S. 242, and Jurek v. Texas, 428 U. S. 262 — identified the background principles we would apply in later cases to evaluate specific rules inhibiting the jury’s ability to give meaningful effect to such mitigating evidence.
In Woodson v. North Carolina, we invalidated a statute that made death the mandatory sentence for all persons convicted of first-degree murder. One of the statute’s constitutional shortcomings was its “failure to allow the particularized consideration of relevant aspects of the character and record of each convicted defendant before the imposition upon him of a sentence of death.” 428 U. S., at 303 (plurality opinion). In Proffitt v. Florida and Jurek v. Texas, the joint opinions rejected facial challenges to the sentencing statutes enacted in Florida and Texas, assuming in both cases that provisions allowing for the unrestricted admissibility of mitigating evidence would ensure that a sentencing jury had adequate guidance in performing its sentencing function. As a majority of the Court later acknowledged, our holding in Jurek did not preclude the possibility that the Texas sentencing statute might be found unconstitutional as applied in a particular case. See n. 15, infra.
Two years later, in Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U. S. 586 (1978), a plurality concluded “that the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments require that the sentencer, in all but the rarest kind of capital case, not be precluded from considering, as a mitigating factor, any aspect of a defendant’s character or record and any of the circumstances of the offense that the defendant proffers as a basis for a sentence less than death.” Id., at 604 (footnote omitted). Because Ohio’s death penalty statute was inconsistent with this principle, it was declared unconstitutional. The plurality noted the possible tension between a holding that the Ohio statute was invalid and our decisions in Proffitt and Jurek upholding the Florida and Texas statutes, but distinguished those cases because neither statute “clearly operated at that time to prevent the sentencer from considering any aspect of the defendant’s character and record or any circumstances of his offense as an independently mitigating factor.” 438 U. S., at 607.
While Chief Justice Burger’s opinion in Lockett was joined by only three other Justices, the rule it announced was endorsed and broadened in our subsequent decisions in Ed-dings v. Oklahoma, 455 U. S. 104 (1982), and Skipper v. South Carolina, 476 U. S. 1 (1986). In those cases, we emphasized the severity of imposing a death sentence and that “the sentencer in capital cases must be permitted to consider any relevant mitigating factor.” Eddings, 455 U. S., at 112 (emphasis added).
In the wake of our decision in Lockett, Ohio amended its capital sentencing statute to give effect to Lockett's holding. Neither Florida nor Texas did so, however, until after our unanimous decision in Hitchcock v. Dugger, 481 U. S. 393 (1987), unequivocally confirmed the settled quality of the Lockett rule. As Justice Scalia’s opinion for the Court explained, the defendant had introduced some rather atypical mitigating evidence that was not expressly authorized by the Florida statute:
“In the sentencing phase of this case, petitioner’s counsel introduced before the advisory jury evidence that as a child petitioner had the habit of inhaling gasoline fumes from automobile gas tanks; that he had once passed out after doing so; that thereafter his mind tended to wander; that petitioner had been one of seven children in a poor family that earned its living by picking cotton; that his father had died of cancer; and that petitioner had been a fond and affectionate uncle to the children of one of his brothers.” 481 U. S., at 397.
As the opinion further explained, the Florida courts had construed the state statute to preclude consideration of mitigating factors unmentioned in the statute. Accordingly, despite our earlier decision in Proffitt upholding the statute against a facial challenge, it was necessary to set aside Hitchcock’s death sentence. We explained:
“We think it could not be clearer that the advisory jury was instructed not to consider, and the sentencing judge refused to consider, evidence of nonstatutory mitigating circumstances, and that the proceedings therefore did not comport with the requirements of Skipper v. South Carolina, 476 U. S. 1 (1986), Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 U. S. 104 (1982), and Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U. S. 586 (1978) (plurality opinion). Respondent has made no attempt to argue that this error was harmless, or that it had no effect on the jury or the sentencing judge. In the absence of such a showing our cases hold that the exclusion of mitigating evidence of the sort at issue here renders the death sentence invalid. See Skipper, supra (evidence that defendant had adapted well to prison life); Eddings, supra (evidence of 16-year-old defendant’s troubled family history and emotional disturbance).” 481 U. S., at 398-399.
Of course, our reference to “exclusion” of the evidence did not refer to its admissibility, but rather to its exclusion from meaningful consideration by the jury. Had Jurek and Proffitt truly stood for the proposition that the mere availability of relevant mitigating evidence was sufficient to satisfy the Constitution’s requirements, Hitchcock could never have been decided as it was.
In the year following our decision in Hitchcock, we made clear that sentencing under the Texas statute, like that under the Florida statute, must accord with the Lockett rule. In Franklin v. Lynaugh, 487 U. S. 164, 172, 177, 183 (1988), the plurality rejected the claim that the judge’s instructions did not allow the jury to give adequate weight to whatever “ ‘residual doubts’ ” it may have had concerning the defendant’s guilt, or to evidence of the petitioner’s good behavior while in prison. That particular holding is unremarkable because we have never held that capital defendants have an Eighth Amendment right to present “residual doubt” evidence at sentencing, see Oregon v. Guzek, 546 U. S. 517, 523-527 (2006), and in most cases evidence of good behavior in prison is primarily, if not exclusively, relevant to the issue of future dangerousness. What makes Franklin significant, however, is the separate opinion of Justice O’Connor, and particularly those portions of her opinion expressing the views of five Justices, see infra, at 253, and n. 15. After summarizing the cases that clarified Jurek’s holding, she wrote:
“In my view, the principle underlying Lockett, Ed-dings, and Hitchcock is that punishment should be directly related to the personal culpability of the criminal defendant.
“ ‘[E]vidence about the defendant’s background and character is relevant because of the belief, long held by this society, that defendants who commit criminal acts that are attributable to a disadvantaged background, or to emotional and mental problems, may be less culpable than defendants who have no such excuse.... Thus, the sentence imposed at the penalty stage should reflect a reasoned moral response to the defendant’s background, character, and crime.’ California v. Brown, 479 U. S. 538, 545 (1987) (O’Connor, J., concurring) (emphasis in original).
“In light of this principle it is clear that a State may not constitutionally prevent the sentencing body from giving effect to evidence relevant to the defendant’s background or character or the circumstances of the offense that mitigates against the death penalty. Indeed, the right to have the sentencer consider and weigh relevant mitigating evidence would be meaningless unless the sentencer was also permitted to give effect to its consideration.
“Under the sentencing procedure followed in this case the jury could express its views about the appropriate punishment only by answering the special verdict questions regarding the deliberateness of the murder and the defendant’s future dangerousness. To the extent that the mitigating evidence introduced by petitioner was relevant to one of the special verdict questions, the jury was free to give effect to that evidence by returning a negative answer to that question. If, however, petitioner had introduced mitigating evidence about his background or character or the circumstances of the crime that was not relevant to the special verdict questions, or that had relevance to the defendant’s moral culpability beyond the scope of the special verdict questions, the jury instructions would have provided the jury with no vehicle for expressing its ‘reasoned moral response’ to that evidence.” 487 U. S., at 184-185 (opinion concurring in judgment) (emphasis added).
Justice O’Connor’s opinion for the Court in Penry I endorsed the views she had expressed in Franklin and unquestionably governs the facts of this ease. Penry contended that his mitigating evidence of mental retardation and an abusive childhood provided a basis for a sentence of life imprisonment rather than death and that the jury should have been instructed that it could consider that evidence when making its sentencing decision. In response to that contention, our opinion first held that Penry was not asking us to make new law because he was relying on a rule that was “dictated” by earlier cases, see n. 10, supra, and explained why Justice O’Connor’s separate opinion in Franklin correctly defined the relevant rule of law. In Franklin, we noted, “both the concurrence and the dissent stressed that ‘the right to have the sentencer consider and weigh relevant mitigating evidence would be meaningless unless the sentencer was also permitted to give effect to its consideration’ in imposing sentence.” 492 U. S., at 321 (citing Franklin, 487 U. S., at 185 (O’Connor, J., concurring in judgment); id., at 199 (Stevens, J., dissenting)).
Applying that standard, we held that neither the “deliberateness” nor the “future dangerousness” special issue provided the jury with a meaningful opportunity to give effect to Penry’s mitigating evidence. With respect to the former, we explained:
“In the absence of jury instructions defining ‘deliberately’ in a way that would clearly direct the jury to consider fully Penry’s mitigating evidence as it bears on his personal culpability, we cannot be sure that the jury was able to give effect to the mitigating evidence of Penry’s mental retardation and history of abuse in answering the first special issue. Without such a special instruction, a juror who believed that Penry’s retardation and background diminished his moral culpability and made imposition of the death penalty unwarranted would be unable to give effect to that conclusion if the juror also believed that Penry committed the crime ‘deliberately.’ Thus, we cannot be sure that the jury’s answer to the first special issue reflected a ‘reasoned moral response’ to Penry’s mitigating evidence.” 492 U. S., at 323.
With respect to the future dangerousness issue, we emphasized the fact that Penry’s evidence of mental retardation was relevant only as an aggravating factor. Id., at 323-324. More broadly, we noted that the evidence of Penry’s mental retardation and childhood abuse functioned as a “two-edged sword,” because it “may diminish his blameworthiness for his crime even as it indicates that there is a probability that he will be dangerous in the future.” Id., at 324. We therefore held that, in the absence of an appropriate instruction directing the “jury to consider fully” mitigating evidence as it bears on the extent to which a defendant is undeserving of a death sentence, “we cannot be sure” that it did so. Id., at 323. As our discussion of the deliberateness issue demonstrates, we did not limit our holding in Penry I to mitigating evidence that can only be viewed as aggravating. When the evidence proffered is double edged, or is as likely to be viewed as aggravating as it is as mitigating, the statute most obviously fails to provide for adequate consideration of such evidence.
The former special issues (as composed at the time of both Penry’s and Cole’s sentencing proceedings) provided an adequate vehicle for the evaluation of mitigating evidence offered to disprove deliberateness or future dangerousness. As Judge Reavley noted in his opinion for the Court of Appeals in Penry I, however, they did not tell the jury as to what “to do if it decided that Penry, because of retardation, arrested emotional development and a troubled youth, should not be executed.” Id., at 324 (internal quotation marks omitted).
V
In recommending denial of Cole’s application for collateral relief, the Texas trial judge did not analyze Penry I itself. Under the framework set forth in Penry I, the testimony of Cole’s mother and aunt, as well as the portions of the expert testimony suggesting that his dangerous character may have been the result of his rough childhood and possible neurological damage, were not relevant to either of the special^ verdiet questions, except, possibly, as evidence supporting the State’s argument that Cole would be dangerous in the future. This would not satisfy the requirement of Penry I, however, that the evidence be permitted its mitigating force beyond the scope of the special issues. Therefore, it would have followed that those questions failed to provide the jury with a vehicle for expressing its “reasoned moral response” to that evidence.
Instead of relying on Penry I, the trial judge relied on three later Texas cases and on our opinion in Graham v. Collins, 506 U. S. 461 (1993), as having held that nine different categories of mitigating evidence — including a tioubled family background, bipolar disorder, low IQ, substance abuse, paranoid personality disorder, and child abuse — were sufficiently considered under the Texas special issues. App. 159-160. Applying those cases, the judge defined the legal issue “whether the mitigating evidence can be sufficiently considered” as one that “must be determined on a case by case basis, depending on the nature of the mitigating evidence offered and whether there exists other testimony in the record that would allow consideration to be given.” Id., at 160. As we have noted, in endorsing this formulation of the issue, neither the trial judge nor the CCA had the benefit of any input from counsel representing petitioner. See Part II, supra. In our view, denying relief on the basis of that formulation of the issue, while ignoring the fundamental principles established by our most relevant precedents, resulted in a decision that was both “contrary to” and “involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States.” 28 U. S. C. § 2254(d).
The state court’s primary reliance on Graham, to the exclusion of our other cases in this line of jurisprudence, was misguided. In Graham, we held that granting collateral relief to a defendant who had been sentenced to death in 1984 would require the announcement of a new rule of constitutional law in contravention of Teague v. Lane, 489 U. S. 288 (1989). In reaching that conclusion we relied heavily on the fact that in 1984 it was reasonable for judges to rely on the interpretation of Jurek that the plurality had espoused in Franklin. See 506 U. S., at 468-472; see also n. 15, supra. But as we have explained, in both Franklin and Penry I, a majority of the Court ultimately rejected the plurality’s interpretation of Jurek. Neither Franklin nor Penry I was inconsistent with Graham's narrow holding, but they do suggest that our later decisions — including Johnson v. Texas, 509 U. S. 350 (1993), in which we refused to adopt the rule that Graham sought — are of more relevance to Cole’s case than Graham. The relevance of those cases lies not in their results — in several instances, we concluded, after applying the relevant law, that the special issues provided for adequate consideration of the defendant’s mitigating evidence — but in their failure to disturb the basic legal principle that continues to govern such cases: The jury must have a “meaningful basis to consider the relevant mitigating qualities” of the defendant’s proffered evidence. Johnson, 509 U. S., at 869; see also Graham, 506 U. S., at 474 (explaining that Penry was entitled to additional instructions “[b]eeause it was impossible [for the jury] to give meaningful mitigating effect to Penry’s evidence by way of answering the special issues”).
Before turning to those more recent cases, it is appropriate to identify the reasons why the CCA’s ruling was not a reasonable application of Penry I itself. First, the ruling ignored the fact that even though Cole’s mitigating evidence may not have been as persuasive as Penry’s, it was relevant to the question of Cole’s moral culpability for precisely the same reason as Penry’s. Like Penry’s evidence, Cole’s evidence of childhood deprivation and lack of self-control did not rebut either deliberateness or future dangerousness but was intended to provide the jury with an entirely different reason for not imposing a death sentence. Second, the judge’s assumption that it would be appropriate to look at “other testimony in the record” to determine whether the jury could give mitigating effect to the testimony of Cole’s mother and aunt is neither reasonable nor supported by the Penry opinion. App. 160. Third, the fact that the jury could give mitigating effect to some of the experts’ testimony, namely, then-predictions that Cole could be expected to become less dangerous as he aged, provides no support for the conclusion that the jury understood it could give such effect to other portions of the experts’ testimony or that of other witnesses. In sum, the judge ignored our entire line of cases establishing the importance of allowing juries to give meaningful effect to any mitigating evidence providing a basis for a sentence of life rather than death. His recommendation to the CCA was therefore unsupported by either the text or the reasoning in Penry I.
VI
The same principles originally set forth in earlier cases such as Lockett and Eddings have been articulated explicitly by our later cases, which explained that the jury must be permitted to “consider fully” such mitigating evidence and that such consideration “would be meaningless” unless the jury not only had such evidence available to it, but also was permitted to give that evidence meaningful, mitigating effect in imposing the ultimate sentence. Penry I, 492 U. S., at 321, 323 (internal quotation marks omitted); Graham, 506 U. S., at 475 (acknowledging that a “constitutional defect” has occurred not only when a jury is “precluded from even considering certain types of mitigating evidence,” but also when “the defendant’s evidence [i]s placed before the sentencer but the sentencer ha[s] no reliable means of giving mitigating effect to that evidence”).
Four of our more recent cases lend support to the conclusion that the CCA’s decision was unsupported by either the text or the reasoning of Penry I. In Johnson v. Texas, we held that the Texas special issues allowed adequate consideration of the petitioner’s youth as a mitigating circumstance. Indeed, we thought it “strainfed] credulity to suppose that the jury would have viewed the evidence of petitioner’s youth as outside its effective reach” because its relevance was so obvious. 509 U. S., at 368

Question: What is the basis of the Supreme Court's decision?
A. judicial review (national level)
B. judicial review (state level)
C. Supreme Court supervision of lower federal or state courts or original jurisdiction
D. statutory construction
E. interpretation of administrative regulation or rule, or executive order
F. diversity jurisdiction
G. federal common law
Answer:

Answer: G