Court Opinion

ID: 9429822
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:28:02.164445+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:21.835488
License: Public Domain

*439Justice Brennan,
with whom Justice Marshall joins,
dissenting.
Adhering to my view that the death penalty is in all circumstances cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U. S. 153, 227 (1976), I would affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit to the extent it vacates respondent Johnny Paul Witt’s sentence of death. Even if I thought otherwise, however, I would vote to affirm the decision below in this case. If the presently prevailing view of the Constitution is to permit the State to exact the awesome punishment of taking a life, then basic justice demands that juries with the power to decide whether a capital defendant lives or dies not be poisoned against the defendant.
The Sixth Amendment jury guarantee “reflects] a profound judgment about the way in which law should be enforced and justice administered. . . . Providing an accused with the right to be tried by a jury of his peers [gives] him an inestimable safeguard against the corrupt or overzealous prosecutor and against the compliant, biased, or eccentric judge.” Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U. S. 145, 155-156 (1968). In Witherspoon v. Illinois, 391 U. S. 510, 521 (1968), the Court recognized that the voir dire practice of “death qualification” — the exclusion for cause, in capital cases, of jurors opposed to capital punishment — can dangerously erode this “inestimable safeguard” by creating unrepresentative juries “uncommonly willing to condemn a man to die.” See also Adams v. Texas, 448 U. S. 38, 44-45, 48-50 (1980). To protect against this risk, Witherspoon and its progeny have required the State to make an exceptionally strong showing that a prospective juror’s views about the death penalty will result in actual bias toward the defendant before permitting exclusion of the juror for cause.
The Court of Appeals below correctly applied the stringent Witherspoon standards to the voir dire colloquy between the prosecutor and prospective juror Colby. Reversing this decision, the Court today abandons Witherspoon’s strict *440limits on death-qualification and holds instead that death-qualification exclusions be evaluated under the same .standards as exclusions for any other cause.1 Championing the right of the State to a jury purged of all possibility of partiality toward a capital defendant, the Court today has shown itself willing to ignore what the Court in Witherspoon and its progeny thought crucial: the inevitable result of the quest for such purity in the jury room in a capital case is not a neutral jury drawn from a fair cross section of the community but a jury biased against the defendant, at least with respect to penalty,2 and a jury from which an identifiable segment of the community has been excluded. Until today it had been constitutionally impermissible for the State to require a defendant to place his life in the hands of such a jury; our fundamental notions of criminal justice were thought to demand that the State, not the defendant, bear the risk of a less than wholly neutral jury when perfect neutrality cannot, as in this situation it most assuredly cannot,3 be achieved. Today the State’s right to ensure exclusion of any juror who might fail *441to vote the death penalty when the State’s capital punishment scheme permits such a verdict vanquishes the defendant’s right to a jury that' assuredly will not impose the death penalty when that penalty would be inappropriate.
I
A
Because the Court is not forthright about the extent to which today’s decision departs from Witherspoon and its progeny, and because the Court does not even acknowledge the constitutional rights Witherspoon is meant to protect, a detailed exposition of Witherspoon v. Illinois is in order.
In the typical case not involving the possibility of a death penalty, the State is given significant leeway to exclude for cause those jurors who indicate that various circumstances might affect their impartiality.4 Broad exclusion is generally permitted even though some such jurors, if pressed further on voir dire, might be discovered to possess the ability to lay aside their prejudices and judge impartially. Although, as we held in Witherspoon, exclusion on “any broader basis” than a juror’s unambiguously expressed inability to follow instructions and abide by an oath serves no legitimate state interest, 391 U. S., at 522, n. 21, such broader exclusion is typically permitted for the sake of convenience because it disserves no interest of the defendant.
The Court’s crucial perception in Witherspoon was that such broad exclusion of prospective jurors on the basis of the possible effect of their views about capital punishment infringes the rights of a capital defendant in a way that broad exclusion for indicia of other kinds of bias does not. No systemic skew in the nature of jury composition results from exclusion of individuals for random idiosyncratic traits likely *442to lead to bias. Exclusion of those opposed to capital punishment, by contrast, keeps an identifiable class of people off the jury in capital cases and is likely systemically to bias juries. Such juries are more likely to be hanging juries, tribunals more disposed in any given case to impose a sentence of death. Id., at 523. These juries will be unlikely to represent a fair cross section of the community, and their verdicts will thus be unlikely to reflect fairly the community’s judgment whether a particular defendant has been shown beyond a reasonable doubt to be guilty and deserving of death. For a community in which a significant segment opposes capital punishment, “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” in a capital case might be a stricter threshold than “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” in a noncapital case. A jury unlikely to reflect such community views is not a jury that comports with the Sixth Amendment. Adams v. Texas, supra, at 50. See Witherspoon, 391 U. S., at 519-520. Cf. Peters v. Kiff, 407 U. S. 493, 503-504 (1972) (opinion of Marshall, J.) (“It is not necessary to conclude that the excluded group will consistently vote as a class in order to conclude . . . that its exclusion deprives the jury of a perspective on human events that may have unsuspected importance”); Ballard v. United States, 329 U. S. 187, 193-194 (1946) (discussing “subtle interplay of influence one on the other” among jurors of varying perspectives).
This perception did not, however, lead us to ban all inquiry into a prospective juror’s views about capital punishment. We also acknowledged, as the Court today correctly points out, that the State’s legitimate interest in an impartial jury encompasses the right to exclude jurors whose views about capital punishment would so distort their judgment that they could not follow the law. Witherspoon accommodated both the defendant’s constitutionally protected rights and the State’s legitimate interests by permitting the State to exclude jurors whose views about capital punishment would *443prevent them from being impartial but requiring strict standards of proof for exclusion. In particular, Witherspoon precluded any speculative presumption that a juror opposed to capital punishment would for that reason lack the ability to be impartial in a particular case; “[a] man who opposes the death penalty, no less than one who favors it, can make the discretionary judgment entrusted to him by the State and can thus obey the oath he takes as a juror.” Witherspoon, supra, at 519. Accord, Maxwell v. Bishop, 398 U. S. 262, 265 (1970); Boulden v. Holman, 394 U. S. 478, 483-484 (1969). Beyond prohibiting any presumption of bias, Witherspoon imposed, as the Court today recognizes, an “extremely high burden of proof” of actual bias. Ante, at 421. The State may exclude only those jurors who make it “unambiguous” or “unmistakably clear,” Witherspoon, supra, at 515-516, n. 9, 522, n. 21, that their views about capital punishment would prevent or substantially impair them from following the law.5
Three important consequences flow from Witherspoon’s stringent standard for exclusion. First, it permits exclusion only of jurors whose views would prevent or substantially impair them from following instructions or abiding by an oath, and not those whose views would simply make these tasks more psychologically or emotionally difficult, nor those whose views would in good faith color their judgment of what a “reasonable doubt” is in a capital case. Adams v. Texas, 448 U. S., at 48-51. Second, it precludes exclusion of jurors *444whose voir dire responses to death-qualification inquiries are ambiguous or vacillating. Witherspoon, supra, at 515-516, n. 9, 522, n. 21. Third, it precludes exclusion of jurors who do not know at voir dire whether their views about the death penalty will prevent them abiding by their oaths at trial. Adams, supra, at 50. See generally Schnapper, Taking Witherspoon Seriously: The Search for Death-Qualified Jurors, 62 Texas L. Rev. 977, 981-993 (1984).
These restrictions not only trace narrowly the compass of permissible exclusion but also allocate to the State the cost of unavoidable uncertainty with respect to whether a prospective juror with scruples about capital punishment should be excluded. They do so in much the same way, and for much the same reason, that the “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” standard of guilt allocates to the State the cost of uncertainty with respect to whether a particular defendant committed a crime. See In re Winship, 397 U. S. 358, 370-373 (1970) (Harlan, J. concurring). At voir dire some prospective jurors may make clear that their opposition to capital punishment will color their judgment but may not make clear whether the effect will rise to the level of “conscious distortion or bias.” Adams v. Texas, supra, at 46. Many others will not bring to the voir dire a considered position about capital punishment and thus may respond with uncertainty, ambiguity, evasion, or even self-contradiction during the death-qualification process. When the time for decision arrives such jurors might or might not turn out to be so affected by the prospect of a death sentence in the case before them that they render a biased judgment; typically neither eventuality can be divined at the voir dire stage.
If under our Constitution we viewed the disadvantage to the defendant from exclusion of unbiased prospective jurors opposed to the death penalty as equivalent to the disadvantage to the prosecution from inclusion of a biased prospective juror, then the law would impose no particular burden favoring or disfavoring exclusion. Because — at least until *445today — we viewed the risks to a defendant’s Sixth Amendment rights from a jury from which those who oppose capital punishment have been excluded as far more serious than the risk to the State from inclusion of particular jurors whose views about the death penalty might turn out to predispose them toward the defendant, we placed on the State an extremely high burden to justify exclusion. Cf. In re Winship, supra, at 370-373 (Harlan, J., concurring); Speiser v. Randall, 357 U. S. 513, 525-526 (1958) (“There is always in litigation a margin of error .... Where one party has at stake an interest of transcending value — as a criminal defendant his liberty — this margin of error is reduced as to him by the process of placing on the other party the burden . . .”). To protect the rights of the capital defendant Witherspoon prohibits exclusion of the ambiguous, evasive, or uncertain juror.
Later cases came to see the essence of Witherspoon as being embedded in the language of footnote 21 of that case. See Adams v. Texas, supra; Boulden v. Holman, supra; Maxwell v. Bishop, supra. The crucial portion of the footnote reads:
“[Njothing we say today bears upon the power of a State to execute a defendant sentenced to death by a jury from which the only veniremen who were in fact excluded for cause were those who made unmistakably clear (1) that they would automatically vote against the imposition of capital punishment without regard to any evidence that might be developed at the trial of the case before them, or (2) that their attitude toward the death penalty would prevent them from making an impartial decision as to the defendant’s guilt.” Witherspoon, 391 U. S., at 522-523, n. 21 (emphasis in original).
This particular two-part inquiry, as the Court today correctly notes, ante, at 419, carries no talismanic significance. Its purpose is to expose the ability vel non of a juror to follow *446instructions and abide by an oath with respect to both sentencing (the first prong) and determining guilt or innocence (the second prong).6 We have held that different forms of inquiry passed muster under Witherspoon so long as they were similarly directed at ascertaining whether a juror could follow instructions and abide by an oath. E. g., Adams v. Texas, 448 U. S., at 44-45; Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U. S. 586, 595-596 (1978).
That permissible Witherspoon inquiries may depart from the language of footnote 21 does not mean, however, that the State may ignore Witherspoon’s strict standards of proof for exclusion when a different form of inquiry is put to the prospective juror. We have repeatedly stressed that the essence of Witherspoon is its requirement that only jurors who make it unmistakably clear that their views about capital punishment would prevent or substantially impair them from following the law may be excluded. Maxwell v. Bishop, 398 U. S. 262 (1970); Boulden v. Holman, 394 U. S. 478 (1969). Thus in summarily reversing several state-court decisions, this Court invalidated death sentences imposed by juries from which jurors had been excluded because their voir dire responses indicated ambiguity or uncertainty as to whether their views about capital punishment would affect their ability to be impartial. Pruett v. Ohio, 403 U. S. 946 (1971), rev’g 18 Ohio St. 2d 167, 248 N. E. 2d 605 (1969); Adams v. Washington, 403 U. S. 947 (1971), rev’g 76 Wash. 2d 650, 458 P. 2d 558 (1969); Mathis v. New Jersey, 403 U. S. 946 (1971), rev’g 52 N. J. 238, 245 A. 2d 20 (1968). And in Lockett v. Ohio, supra, we approved exclusions because the excused prospective jurors had made it “‘unmistakably clear’” that *447they could not take an oath to be impartial. 438 U. S., at 596 (quoting Witherspoon, supra, at 522-523, n. 21). Most recently, in Adams v. Texas, this Court reaffirmed that exclusion absent a juror’s unambiguously stated inability to follow the law and abide by an oath was constitutionally impermissible. 448 U. S., at 50.
B
A comprehensive understanding of the principles of Witherspoon makes clear that the decision of the Court of Appeals below was correct. The court below faithfully sought to implement Witherspoon’s accommodation of the interests of the defendant in avoiding a jury “ ‘uncommonly willing to condemn a man to die,’” 714 F. 2d 1069, 1076-1080 (1984) (quoting Witherspoon, supra, at 521), and of the State in “the necessity of excusing for cause those prospective jurors who, because of their lack of impartiality from holding unusually strong views against the death penalty, would frustrate a state’s legitimate effort to administer an otherwise constitutionally valid death penalty scheme.” 714 F. 2d, at 1076-1080. Following Adams v. Texas, supra, the court below articulated an accurate understanding of the stringent burdens of proof Witherspoon places on the State:
“[A] prospective juror must be permitted great leeway in expressing opposition to the death penalty before he or she qualifies for dismissal for cause. A prospective juror may even concede that his or her feelings about the death penalty would possibly color an objective determination of the facts of a case without admitting of the necessary partiality to justify excusal.” 714 F. 2d, at 1076-1080.
See Adams v. Texas, supra, at 49-50.
Applying this correct understanding of the law to the colloquy between the prosecutor and prospective juror Colby, the court held that Colby’s “statements fall far short of the eer-*448tainty required by Witherspoon to justify for cause excusal.” 714 F. 2d, at 1082. The court traced this lack of certainty in part to “the State’s failure to frame its questions in an appropriately unambiguous manner,” given the standard of proof the State had to meet to justify exclusion. Ibid. Specifically, the court criticized the State’s use of the word “interfere” in its examination:
“The word ‘interfere’ admits of a great variety of interpretations, and we would find it quite unnatural for a person, who has already expressed her concern about the death penalty, to respond otherwise than that her feelings would ‘interfere’ with, ‘color,’ or ‘affect’ her determinations. Such a response does not indicate an inability, in all cases, to apply the death sentence or to find the defendant guilty where such a finding could lead to capital punishment because it fails to reflect the profundity of any such ‘interference.’” Ibid.
Though critical of the prosecutor’s decision to fashion his questioning around the word “interfere,” the court below did not base its decision on this divergence from the precise inquiry of Witherspoon’s footnote 21. 714 F. 2d, at 1083.7 Rather, the court relied on Witherspoon’s stringent standards of proof in deciding that the exclusion of Colby was improper. Colby’s statement that she thought her personal views about capital punishment might interfere with “judg*449ing [the] guilt or innocence [of the defendant],” 714 F. 2d, at 1083, was, the court held, not a sufficiently unambiguous statement of inability to follow instructions or abide by an oath to justify exclusion under applicable principles. This decision is perfectly congruent with our recent holding in Adams. 448 U. S., at 49-50. The court therefore ordered resentencing — not retrial — for Witt in accord with Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment requirements.8
*450II
A
Adams v. Texas, supra, is, ironically, precisely the authority the Court today invokes to reverse the Court of Appeals below. In what must under the circumstances be taken as a tacit admission that application of Witherspoon’s stringent standards of proof would validate the decision of the Court of Appeals, the Court casts Adams as a substantial retrenchment; “the standard applied in Adams,” claims the Court, “differs markedly from the language of footnote 21 [of Witherspoon].” Ante, at 421. To the extent the Court reads Adams as eschewing unthinking adherence to the particular two-part inquiry propounded in footnote 21, I have no quarrel. See supra, at 445-446. The Court, however, purports to find in Adams a renunciation of Witherspoon’s stringent standards of proof. Ante, at 421 (“[G]one too is the extremely high burden of proof”). In essence the Court reads Adams as saying that there is no constitutional distinction between exclusion for death penalty bias and exclusion for other types of bias. See Patton v. Yount, 467 U. S. 1025 (1984). Had the Court of Appeals understood that this more lenient exclusion standard governed, today’s opinion asserts, it would have realized that the state trial court’s voir dire excusal of Colby should not be disturbed.
Adams did not, however, desert the principles of Witherspoon. It is the Court’s brazenly revisionist reading of Adams today that leaves Witherspoon behind. Justice Rehnquist, dissenting from Adams, thought the opinion of the Court “expand[ed]” the scope of Witherspoon’s restrictions. 448 U. S., at 52. Virtually all federal and state *451appellate courts considering Witherspoon claims in light of Adams have read the case as a clear endorsement of the Witherspoon approach encapsulated in footnote 21. See, e. g., Darden v. Wainwright, 725 F. 2d 1526, 1528-1529 (CA11 1984) (en banc); Davis v. Zant, 721 F. 2d 1478, 1486 (CA11 1983); Spencer v. Zant, 715 F. 2d 1562, 1576 (CA11 1983); Hance v. Zant, 696 F. 2d 940, 954 (CA11 1983); O’Bryan v. Estelle, 691 F. 2d 706, 709 (CA5 1982); Burns v. Estelle, 626 F. 2d 396, 397-398 (CA5 1980); Herring v. State, 446 So. 2d 1049, 1055 (Fla. 1984); People v. Velasquez, 28 Cal. 3d 461, 622 P. 2d 952 (1980); People v. Gaines, 88 Ill. 2d 342, 351-352, 430 N. E. 2d 1046, 1051 (1981); State v. Mercer, 618 S. W. 2d 1, 6 (Mo. 1981) (en banc).
One need look no further than the text of Adams to understand why it has been perceived until today as consistent with Witherspoon. Adams quoted Witherspoon’s footnote 21 with approval and stated that the test in that footnote was “clearly designed” to accommodate both the State’s interest and the defendant’s interest. Adams, supra, at 44. Reaffirming that Witherspoon must be seen as “a limitation on the State’s power to exclude,” Adams held that “if prospective jurors are barred from jury service because of their views about capital punishment on ‘any broader basis’ than inability to follow the law or abide by their oaths, the death sentence cannot be carried out. Witherspoon v. Illinois, 391 U. S., at 522, n. 21.” 448 U. S., at 48. In holding that the State may exclude only those whose views about capital punishment “would prevent or substantially impair” their ability to follow instructions and abide by an oath, id., at 45, the Court made clear that the State may exclude only jurors whose views would lead to “conscious distortion or bias.” Id., at 46 (emphasis added).
Nothing in Adams suggests that the Court intended to abandon Witherspoon’s strict standards of proof. The Court’s intent to reaffirm these standards is evident in its approving quotation of the “unmistakably clear” language of *452footnote 21, Adams, supra, at 44, and, more importantly, in its delineation of the circumstances in which exclusion is impermissible. Adams explicitly prohibited exclusion of jurors whose views about capital punishment might invest their deliberations with greater seriousness, 448 U. S., at 49-50, those whose views would make it emotionally more difficult for them to follow their oaths, ibid., and those who cannot affirmatively say whether or not their views would distort their determinations, id., at 50. Even those “who frankly concede that the prospects of the death penalty may affect what their honest judgment of the facts will be or what they may deem to be a reasonable doubt” may not be excluded if “they aver that they will honestly find the facts . . . if they are convinced beyond [a] reasonable doubt.” Ibid.
Adams was true to Witherspoon’s recognition that the Constitution prohibits imposition of a death sentence by a jury from which a juror was excluded on any broader basis than an unambiguous affirmatively stated inability to follow instructions and abide by an oath. The Court today establishes an entirely new standard significantly more lenient than that of Witherspoon. The difference does not lie in the freedom of the State to depart from the precise inquiry of Witherspoon’s footnote 21; that freedom, as I have made clear, has long been established. See supra, at 445-446; Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U. S., at 595-596. The crucial departure is the decision to discard Witherspoon’s stringent standards of proof. The Court no longer prohibits exclusion of uncertain, vacillating, or ambiguous prospective jurors. It no longer requires an unmistakably clear showing that a prospective juror will be prevented or substantially impaired from following instructions and abiding by an oath. Instead the trial judge at voir dire is instructed to evaluate juror uncertainty, ambiguity, or vacillation to decide whether the juror’s views about capital punishment “might frustrate administration of a State’s death penalty scheme.” Ante, *453at 416 (emphasis added).9 If so, that juror may be excluded. In essence, the Court has shifted to the capital defendant the risk of a biased and unrepresentative jury. This result debases the Sixth Amendment’s jury guarantees.
B
Rewriting Adams to suit present purposes, the Court has of course relieved itself of much of its burden of justification; invoking precedent, the Court dodges the obligation to provide support for its decision to deprive the capital defendant of protections long recognized as fundamental. Nonetheless, perhaps in tacit recognition that today’s departure calls for an explanation, the Court has offered three reasons for preferring what it misleadingly calls the “Adams test.” Ante, at 421. Stripped of their false lustre of precedential force, these justifications neither jointly nor severally support the Court’s abandonment of Witherspoon.
The Court’s first justification is linked to changes in the role of juries in capital cases. Because jurors no longer have the unfettered discretion to impose or withhold capital punishment that they had in Illinois and other States at the time of Witherspoon, the Court asserts, there is no longer any reason to require empaneling of jurors who will merely consider a sentence of death under some circumstances. The State *454should be permitted to exclude all jurors unable to follow the guided discretion procedures that, as a result of the Court’s Eighth Amendment decisions, now govern capital sentencing. Ante, at 422. In the interest of candor, the Court might have mentioned that precisely this analysis prompted Justice Rehnquist’s dissent in Adams; 448 U. S., at 52 (“[A]t a time when this Court should be re-examining the doctrinal underpinnings of Witherspoon in light of our intervening decisions in capital cases, it instead expands that precedent as if those underpinnings had remained wholly static”). It is most curious that the identical reasoning is now marshaled to justify a “test” purportedly derived from the Court’s holding in that case.
More to the point, this reasoning does not in any way justify abandonment of the restrictions Witherspoon has placed on the exclusion of prospective jurors. Without a doubt, a State may inquire whether a particular juror will be able to follow his or her oath to abide by the particulars of a guided discretion sentencing approach, and upon receiving an unmistakably clear negative response the State may properly move to exclude that juror. Lockett v. Ohio, supra, at 595-596. But the existence of a guided discretion scheme in no way diminishes the defendant’s interest in a jury composed of a fair cross section of the community and a jury not “uncommonly willing to condemn a man to die.” Witherspoon v. Illinois, 391 U. S., at 521. Even under a guided discretion proceeding a juror must have the opportunity to consider all available mitigating evidence, Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 U. S.-104 (1982), and to decide against imposition of the death sentence in any individual case, Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U. S. 280 (1976). Under our Constitution, the capital sentencer must undertake a sensitive “ ‘consideration of the character and record of the individual offender and the circumstances of the particular offense as a[n]. . . indispensable part of the process of inflicting the penalty of death.’ ” Eddings, supra, at 112 (quoting Woodson, supra, at 304). As *455Adams recognizes, making such judgments “is not an exact science, and the jurors . . . unavoidably exercise a range of judgment and discretion while remaining true to their instructions and their oaths.” 448 U. S., at 46. That is why the State may not exclude jurors
" who frankly concede thatthe prospects of the death penalty may affect what their honest judgment of the facts will be or what they may deem to be a reasonable doubt. Such assessments and judgments by jurors are inherent in the jury system, and to exclude all jurors who would be in the slightest way affected . . . would be deprive the defendant of the impartial jury to which or she is entitled under the law.” Id., at 50.
The risks that Witherspoon sought to minimize through defining high standards of proof for exclusions based on death penalty scruples are, we correctly held in Adams, equally prevalent in the context of guided discretion sentencing schemes.
As a second justification for the so-called “Adams test” the Court serves up the claim that Witherspoon's footnote 21 approach was dictum. That footnote 21 might have been dictum is not, of course, an affirmative reason for adopting the particular alternative the Court advances today. Were the claim correct it would merely leave more leeway to depart from the Witherspoon restrictions. More importantly, the label “dictum” does not begin to convey the status that the restrictions embodied in footnote 21 have achieved in this Court and state and federal courts over the last decade and a half. See supra, at 445, 450-451. From Boulden v. Holman, 394 U. S. 478 (1969), and Maxwell v. Bishop, 398 U. S. 262 (1970), through Adams, supra, this Court has applied the strict burdens of proof of Witherspoon’s footnote 21 to invalidate sentences imposed by juries from which scrupled jurors had been too readily excluded. The Court concedes as much at another point in its opinion when it *456acknowledges that footnote 21 “se[t] the standard” for subsequent cases. Ante, at 418.
The Court’s third proffered justification is that the so-called “Adams standard ... is in accord with the traditional reasons for excluding jurors and with the circumstances under which such determinations are made.” Ante, at 423. In essence, the Court argues that the so-called Adams standard should be followed because it excludes jurors for bias on the same grounds and using the same standards as would be used for exclusion based on any other type of bias: “exclu[sion of] jurors because of their opposition to capital punishment is no different from excluding jurors for innumerable other reasons which result in bias . . . .” Ante, at 429. This position is at the core of the Court’s holding in this case, but between this position and the basic principles of Witherspoon lies an unbridgeable chasm.
The crux of Witherspoon was its recognition of a constitutionally significant distinction between exclusion of jurors opposed to capital punishment and exclusion of jurors for the “innumerable other reasons which result in bias.” Ante, at 429. The very nature of a Witherspoon challenge illuminates the difference. In typical cases involving an allegation of juror bias unrelated to death penalty scruples, the convicted defendant challenges the inclusion of particular jurors. E. g., Patton v. Yount, 467 U. S. 1025 (1984); Smith v. Phillips, 455 U. S. 209 (1982). In a Witherspoon case the convicted defendant challenges the exclusion of particular jurors. If, as the Court suggests, the only interest at stake in a Witherspoon case is the equivalent right of the defendant and the State to impartial individual jurors, ante, at 423, then the entire thrust of the Witherspoon inquiry makes no sense. To be relevant to the right the Court claims is at stake, the inquiry would have to focus on whether the individual jurors who replaced the excluded prospective jurors were impartial; if so, then no harm would result from the exclusion of particular prospective jurors, whatever the reason for the exclusion.
*457Witherspoon, of course, focused on the very different sort of injury that might result from systematic exclusion of those opposed to capital punishment: the risk of hanging juries, 391 U. S., at 521, n. 20, from which a distinct segment of the community has been excluded. Id., at 520. Witherspoon’s prohibition against presuming bias and its requirement of an unmistakably clear showing of actual bias sufficient to prevent or substantially impair a juror’s ability to abide by an oath are the means by which the risk of constitutional injury is minimized.
The Court today eliminates both protections. It rejects the rule that stricter standards govern death-qualification, and as a justification for doing so indulges precisely the presumption of bias Witherspoon prohibited: “we do not think, simply because a defendant is being tried for a capital crime, that he is entitled to a legal presumption or standard that allows jurors to be seated who quite likely will be biased in his favor.” Ante, at 423 (emphasis added). The trick in the majority opinion should by now be clear. The Court simply refuses to recognize the constitutional rights Witherspoon’s stringent standards of proof were designed to safeguard. The Court limits the Sixth Amendment to the partiality vel non of individual jurors; “[h]ere, as elsewhere, the quest is for jurors who will conscientiously apply the law and find the facts.” Ante, at 423 (emphasis added). As today’s opinion would have it, the Sixth Amendment has nothing to say about the overall compositition of the jury, and in particular about the capital defendant’s right to a jury not predisposed toward the death sentence and representative of a fair cross section of the community. A defendant’s established right to a jury that reflects the community’s judgment about whether the evidence supporting conviction and execution for a particular crime crosses the “reasonable doubt” threshold has been made to disappear.
This bit of legerdemain permits the Court to offer an easy analogy to exclusion for other types of bias and argue that *458death-qualification should be evaluated under the same lenient standards. Ante, at 423-424. Because the Court never acknowledges the constitutional rights Witherspoon was meant to protect, it need not explain why Witherspoon’s protections are no longer needed. It is bad enough that the Court is so eager to discard well-established Sixth Amendment rights of a capital defendant for the sake of efficient capital punishment. But if the Court is to take such a precipitate step, at the very least it should acknowledge having done so and explain why these consistently recognized rights should be recognized no longer.
Ill
Witherspoon, as the foregoing discussion makes clear, is best understood in the context of our cases preserving the integrity of the jury both as an impartial factfinder and as the voice of the community. As such the protection of Witherspoon’s stringent standards of proof could not be more important to the capital defendant:
“The guarantees of jury trial in the Federal and State Constitutions reflect a profound judgment about the way in which law should be enforced and justice administered. A right to jury trial is granted to criminal defendants in order to prevent oppression by the Government. . . . Providing an accused with the right to be tried by a jury of his peers gave him an inestimable safeguard against the corrupt or overzealous prosecutor and against the compliant, biased, or eccentric judge. If the defendant preferred the common-sense judgment of a jury to the more tutored but perhaps less sympathetic reaction of the single judge, he was to have it. Beyond this, the jury trial provisions in the Federal and State Constitutions reflect a fundamental decision about the exercise of official power — a reluctance to entrust plenary powers over the life and liberty of the citizen to one *459judge or to a group of judges. Fear of unchecked power, so typical of our State and Federal Governments in other respects, found expression in the criminal law in this insistence upon community participation in the determination of guilt or innocence.” Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U. S. 145, 155-156 (1968) (footnote omitted).
Crucial to the jury right is the requirement that “the jury be a body truly representative of the community.” Smith v. Texas, 311 U. S. 128, 130 (1940). As we said in Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U. S. 522 (1975), “[t]his prophylactic vehicle is not provided if the jury pool is made up of only special segments of the populace or if large, distinctive groups are excluded from the pool.” Id., at 530. The death-qualification process is fraught with threats to these constitutional guarantees.10
The risk of the “overzealous prosecutor and . . . the compliant, biased, or eccentric judge,” Duncan v. Louisiana, supra, at 156, is particularly acute in the context of a capital case. Passions, as we all know, can run to the extreme when the State tries one accused of a barbaric act against society, or one accused of a crime that — for whatever reason— inflames the community. Pressures on the government to secure a conviction, to “do something,” can overwhelm even those of good conscience. See Patton v. Yount, 467 U. S., at 1053 (Stevens, J., dissenting). When prosecutors and judges are elected, or when they harbor political ambitions, such pressures are particularly dangerous. Cf. Spaziano v. Florida, 468 U. S. 447, 467 (1984) (Stevens, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). With such pressures invariably being brought to bear, strict controls on the death-*460qualification process are imperative. Death-qualification works to the advantage of only the prosecutor; if not carefully controlled, it is tool with which the prosecutor can create a jury perhaps predisposed to convict11 and certainly predisposed to impose the ultimate sanction. that
Broad death-qualification threatens the requirement that juries be drawn from a fair cross section of the community and thus undermines both the defendant’s interest in a representative body and society’s interest in full community participation in capital sentencing. “One of the most important *461functions any jury can perform in making such a selection [of life or death] is to maintain a link between contemporary community values and the penal system — a link without which the determination of punishment could hardly reflect ‘the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.’” Witherspoon, 391 U. S., at 519, n. 15 (quoting Trop v. Dulles, 356 U. S. 86, 101 (1958) (opinion of Warren, C. J.)). As Justice Stevens wrote last Term, “if the decision that capital punishment is the appropriate sanction in extreme cases is justified because it expresses the community’s moral sensibility — its demand that a given affront to humanity requires retribution — it follows . . . that a representative cross section of the community must be given the responsibility for making that decision.” Spaziano v. Florida, supra, at 481 (concurring in part and dissenting in part).
That the Court would be willing to place the life of this capital defendant, and all others, in the hands of a skewed jury is unpardonable. Of perhaps equal gravity are the implications of today’s opinion for the established right of every criminal defendant to a jury drawn from a fair cross section of the community. Taylor v. Louisiana, supra. If, as the Court suggests, the Sixth Amendment jury right requires only a “quest... for jurors who will conscientiously apply the law and find the facts,” ante, at 423 — if, in other words, the only pertinent question is whether the individual jurors are impartial, see Duren v. Missouri, 439 U. S. 357, 371, n. (1979) (Rehnquist, J., dissenting); Taylor v. Louisiana, supra, at 538 (Rehnquist, J., dissenting)—then the right to a jury drawn from a fair cross section of the community is lost.

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Though the unexplained evisceration of Witherspoon s protections of a capital defendant’s Sixth Amendment rights is the most troubling accomplishment of the opinion for the Court, its discussion of the proper standard of review of *462state-court Witherspoon determinations cannot pass without some comment. One evident purpose of the Court’s redefinition of the standards governing death-qualification is to bring review of death-qualfication questions within the scope of the presumption of correctness of state-court factual findings on federal collateral review. 28 U. S. C. § 2254(d). In recent cases the Court has held that the question whether a juror is biased is a question of fact and therefore review of a trial court’s voir dire decision to exclude or not exclude receives a presumption of correctness under § 2254(d). E. g., Patton v. Yount, 467 U. S. 1025 (1984).
Had the Court maintained Witherspoon’s strict for death-qualification, there would be no question that trial-court decisions to exclude scrupled jurors would not be questions of fact subject to the presumption of correctness. Whether a prospective juror with qualms about the death penalty expressed an inability to abide by an oath with sufficient strength and clarity to justify exclusion is certainly a “mixed question” — an application of a legal standard to undisputed historical fact. Even if one were to accept the Court’s redefinition of the proper standards for death-qualification, it would not follow that the Court’s holding with respect to the applicability of § 2254(d) is correct. JUSTICE Stevens, dissenting in Patton v. Yount, supra, has persuasively demonstrated that “the question whether a juror has an opinion that disqualifies is a mixed one of law and fact,” id., at 1052, because the question is “ ‘whether the nature and strength of the opinion formed are such as in law necessarily . . . raise the presumption of partiality.’” Ibid., (quoting Irvin v. Dowd, 366 U. S. 717, 723 (1961)).
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Today's opinion for the Court is the product of a saddening confluence of three of the most disturbing trends in our constitutional jurisprudence respecting the fundamental rights of our people. The first is the Court’s unseemly eagerness to *463recognize the strength of the State’s interest in efficient law enforcement and to make expedient sacrifices of the constitutional rights of the criminal defendant to such interests. United States v. Leon, 468 U. S. 897, 929-930 (1984) (Brennan, J., dissenting). The second is the Court’s increasing disaffection with the previously unquestioned principle, endorsed by every Member of this Court, that “because of its severity and irrevocability, the death penalty is qualitatively different from any other punishment, and hence must be accompanied by unique safeguards . . . .” Spaziano v. Florida, 468 U. S., at 468 (Stevens, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). E. g., Pulley v. Harris, 465 U. S. 37 (1984); Spaziano v. Florida, supra, at 461-464 (opinion of the Court); Barclay v. Florida, 463 U. S. 939 (1983). The third is the Court’s increasingly expansive definition of “questions of fact” calling for application of the presumption of correctness of 28 U. S. C. § 2254(d) to thwart vindication of fundamental rights in the federal courts. E. g., Patton v. Yount, supra; Rushen v. Spain, 464 U. S. 114 (1983); Marshall v. Lonherger, 459 U. S. 422 (1983). These trends all reflect the same desolate truth: we have lost our sense of the transcendent importance of the Bill of Rights to our society. See United States v. Leon, supra, at 980 (Stevens, J., dissenting) (“[I]t is the very purpose of a Bill of Rights to identify values that may not be sacrificed to expediency”). We have lost too our sense of our own role as Madisonian “guardians” of these rights. See 1 Annals of Cong. 439 (1789) (remarks of James Madison). Like the death-qualified juries that the prosecution can now mold to its will to enhance the chances of victory, this Court increasingly acts as the adjunct of the State and its prosecutors in facilitating efficient and expedient conviction and execution irrespective of the Constitution’s fundamental guarantees. One can only hope that this day too will soon pass.

 The Court has depicted the lurid details of respondent Witt’s crime with the careful skill of a pointillist. Had the Court been equally diligent in rendering the holding below, it might not have neglected to mention that, as in every case of a violation of Witherspoon v. Illinois, 391 U. S. 510 (1968), only the defendant’s death sentence and not his conviction was vacated. However heinous Witt’s crime, the majority's vivid portrait of its gruesome details has no bearing on the issue before us. It is not for this Court to decide whether Witt deserves to die. That decision must first be made by a jury of his peers, so long as the jury is impartial and drawn from a fair cross section of the community in conformity with the requirements of the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments.

 Witherspoon held that a sentence of death imposed by such a jury violated the Sixth Amendment, but, because the evidence was fragmentary at that time, declined to hold that an underlying conviction by such a jury was also unconstitutionally infirm because the jury would be conviction-prone. Id., at 517-518. See n. 11, infra.

 See Gross, Determining the Neutrality of Death-Qualified Juries, 8 Law and Human Behavior 7, 26-28 (1984).

 See generally 2 W. Lafave & J. Israel, Criminal Procedure §21.3 (1984).

 In Witherspoon the Court defined the excludable class as those whose views would “prevent” impartiality. 391 U. S., at 522, n. 21. Adams v. Texas, 448 U. S. 38 (1980), defined the excludable class as those whose views would prevent or substantially impair impartiality. Id., at 45. This variation is not significant; the primary focus of the Witherspoon inquiry, as Adams made clear, remains on whether the prospective juror can follow instructions and abide by an oath. Adams, supra, at 45, 49-50.

 At the time of Witherspoon Illinois left to the complete discretion of the jury the choice whether a convicted capital defendant lived or died. Thus any juror who would consider the death penalty under some circumstances — who, in other words, would not automatically vote against it — could abide by the instructions and oath in Illinois at the time. Witherspoon, 391 U. S., at 519-520.

 The opinion of this Court suggests that the court below, slavishly devoted to the precise wording of Witherspoon’s footnote 21, invalidated the exclusion because the prosecutor used the word “interfere” instead of footnote 21’s language. Ante, at 432-434. The most cursory reading of the court's opinion belies this representation of the decision as turning on a semantic quibble about “synonyms and antonyms.” Ante, at 433. In rejecting precisely this argument below, the Court of Appeals explicitly stated that it based its decision on an evaluation of the “totality of the circumstances.” 714 F. 2d, at 1083. Its evaluation involved far more than the form of the question, and the opinion criticized the form of the question only insofar as it failed to elicit a degree of certainty sufficient to permit exclusion under Witherspoon.

 Reversing the Court of Appeals below, this Court places some weight on, and Justice Stevens concurring in the judgment gives determinative weight to, the fact that Witt’s counsel did not object to the exclusion of prospective juror Colby. See ante, at 430-431, and n. 11, 434-435; ante, at 437-438 (Stevens, J., concurring in judgment). Because the state courts did not enforce a contemporaneous-objection bar and thus ruled on Witt’s claimed Witherspoon violation, the federal courts were of course free to consider the claim on a petition for habeas corpus. Ulster County Court v. Allen, 442 U. S. 140, 154 (1979). Nonetheless the Court relies on the failure to object either as evidence that Colby was not ambiguous in expressing her views, ante at 431, n. 11, or to suggest that defense counsel had some duty to attempt rehabilitation in order to resolve any ambiguities in Colby’s testimony, ante, at 434-435. Justice Stevens relies on the failure to object as proof sufficient to rebut the argument that “the State’s failure to make the kind of record required by Adams v. Texas constitutes an error so fundamental that it infects the validity of the death sentence in this case.” Ante, at 438 (concurring in judgment).
With respect to the Court’s reliance on the failure to object, counsel’s failure could be evidence of no more than a lack of competence or attentiveness. And I fail to see how any demeanor evidence, the existence of which the Court infers from counsel’s silence, could turn Colby’s statement that she thought her views about capital punishment might interfere with her ability to judge guilt or innocence into an unmistakably clear declaration that she would be unable to follow instructions and abide by an oath. In any event, Witherspoon placed on defense counsel no burden to rehabilitate an ambiguous venireperson. As the Court of Appeals correctly held below, unless the prosecution resolves ambiguity to the extent of showing an unmistakably clear inability to follow the law, the juror may not be excluded.
With respect to the form of “harmless error” analysis in Justice Stevens’ separate opinion, this Court has held on direct review that the improper exclusion of one prospective juror under Witherspoon precludes imposition of the death penalty irrespective of who replaces that prospec*450tive juror. Davis v. Georgia, 429 U. S. 122, 123 (1976). Particularly when a defendant’s right to continue living is at issue, I fail to understand how an error held to be so fundamental as to preclude any harmless-error analysis on direct review should be treated as any less fundamental on habeas corpus review.

 The Court recognizes that most juror responses to death-qualifications will be ambiguous, in large part because “veniremen may not know how they will react when faced with imposing the death sentence . . ..” Ante, at 425. Nevertheless, the Court goes on to ascribe to the trial judge the power to divine through demeanor alone which of such jurors “would be unable to faithfully and impartially apply the law,” ante, at 426, and requires deference to the trial-court decisions to exclude for this reason. Not surprisingly, the Court provides no support for the rather remarkable assertion that a judge will, despite ambiguity in a juror’s response, be able to perceive a juror’s inability to follow the law and abide by an oath when the juror himself or herself does not yet know how he or she will react to the case at hand.

 Though these cases involve systematic exclusion from the jury pool and not from a particular jury, death-qualification is the functional equivalent of exclusion from the pool. The prosecution has unlimited ability to challenge prospective jurors for cause and uses the challenges to remove all members of an identifiable segment of the community from the pool.

 As noted in n. 2, supra, Witherspoon declined to hold that broad excluof those opposed to capital punishment would render juries conviction-prone. Since that time numerous studies have all but confirmed that death-qualified juries are conviction-prone. E. g., Sequin & Horowitz, Effects of “Death Qualification” on Juror and Jury Decisioning: An Analysis from Three Perspectives, 8 L. & Psychology Rev. 49 (1984); Fitzgerald & Ellsworth, Due Process vs. Crime Control: Death Qualification and Jury Attitudes, 8 Law and Human Behavior 31 (1984); Cowan, Thompson, & Ellsworth, The Effects of Death Qualification on Jurors’ Predisposition to Convict and on the Quality of Deliberation, 8 Law and Human Behavior 53 (1984); Thompson, Cowan, Ellsworth, & Harrington, Death Penalty Attitudes and Conviction Proneness: The Translation of Attitudes into Verdicts, 8 Law and Human Behavior 95 (1984). Some studies have even suggested that the process of death-qualification tends bias remaining jurors toward the prosecution. Haney, On the Selection of Capital Juries: The Biasing Effects of the Death-Qualification Process, 8 Law and Human Behavior 121 (1984).
Law At least one Federal District Court has held that even juries death-qualified under the strict standards of Witherspoon are constitutionally infirm because they are, as a matter of empirical fact, more likely to convict than a jury drawn from a fair cross section of the community. Grigsby v. Mabry, 569 F. Supp. 1273 (ED Ark. 1983) (appeal en banc pending in Eighth Circuit). One other District Court held to the same effect, Keeton v. Garrison, 578 F. Supp. 1164 (WDNC 1984), but the Fourth Circuit recently reversed this decision. Keeton v. Garrison, 742 F. 2d 129 (1984). Instead of recognizing that the process of death-qualification creates serious risks, even within the contours of Witherspoon, this Court abandons any limits on the process and thereby enhances the possibility of erroneous convictions as well as erroneous sentences.