Court Opinion

ID: 9434052
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:42:07.743958+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:46.040485
License: Public Domain

Justice Scalia,
dissenting.
While I concede that today’s judgment is a logical extension of Simmons v. South Carolina, 512 U. S. 154 (1994), I am more attached to the logic of the Constitution, whose Due Process Clause was understood as an embodiment of common-law tradition, rather than as authority for federal courts to promulgate wise national rules of criminal procedure.
As I pointed out in Simmons, that common-law tradition does not contain special jury-instruction requirements for capital eases. Today’s decision is the second page of the “whole new chapter” of our improvised “‘death-is-different’ jurisprudence” that Simmons began. Id., at 185 (Scalia, J., dissenting). The third page (or the fourth or fifth) will be the (logical-enough) extension of this novel requirement to cases in which the jury did not inquire into the possibility of parole. Providing such information may well be a good idea (though it will sometimes harm rather than help the defendant’s ease) — and many States have indeed required it. See App. B to Brief for Petitioner. The Constitution, however, does not. I would limit Simmons to its facts.