Court Opinion

ID: 9431393
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:32:12.535006+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:28.279325
License: Public Domain

*189Justice Stevens,
with whom Justice Brennan and Justice Marshall join, dissenting.
The plurality’s opinion discusses three subjects. In Part II-A the plurality explains why in this case there was no interference with any right petitioner may have had under the Eighth Amendment to have the jury consider “residual doubt” in making its sentencing determination. I do not disagree with that conclusion. In Part II-B the plurality concludes that evidence concerning petitioner’s good behavior in prison is relevant to the sentencing determination only insofar as it may shed light on his future behavior. I disagree with that conclusion. Finally, in the last paragraph of Part II-B and in Part III, the plurality makes general comments on the Texas capital sentencing scheme. I shall begin with a discussion of the relevance of petitioner’s mitigating evidence and an explanation of why, under the Texas sentencing scheme, the failure to give instructions similar to those requested by petitioner prevented the jury from giving that evidence independent mitigating weight. I will then comment on the portion of the plurality’s opinion that seems to imply that it is permissible to “channel jury discretion in capital sentencing” by foreclosing the jury’s consideration of relevant mitigating evidence.
I
In this case the mitigating evidence submitted by petitioner consisted of a stipulation indicating that during two periods of imprisonment aggregating about seven years he committed no disciplinary violations. That evidence militated against imposition of the death sentence in two quite different ways. Looking to the past, it suggested the possibility that petitioner’s character was not without some redeeming features; a human being who can conform to strict prison rules without incident for several years may have virtues that can fairly be balanced against society’s interest in killing him in retribution for his violent crime. Looking to the future, that evidence suggested that a sentence to prison, *190rather than to death, would adequately protect society from future acts of violence by petitioner. The evidence was admissible for both purposes.
In Skipper v. South Carolina, 476 U. S. 1 (1986), the State argued that evidence of good behavior in prison could be excluded when offered to show the defendant’s “future adaptability to prison life” id., at 6 (emphasis in original), even though it could properly be admitted to prove “past good conduct in jail for purposes of establishing his good character.” Ibid. We rejected that distinction as a basis for excluding this type of evidence. Implicitly the Court held that the evidence must be admitted not only for its relevance to the defendant’s character and past history but also for its relevance to a prediction about his future behavior.
Ironically, today the plurality turns the Court’s decision in Skipper on end. The plurality holds that no special instruction was needed to allow the jury to give adequate weight to the evidence of petitioner’s good conduct in prison because that evidence had no relevance except insofar as it shed light on petitioner’s probable future conduct. The plurality is quite wrong. Past conduct often provides insights into a person’s character that will evoke a merciful response to a demand for the ultimate punishment even though it may shed no light on what may happen in the future. Evidence of past good behavior in prison is relevant in this respect just as is evidence of honorable military service or kindness to those in the defendant’s community or regular church attendance. Although it may aid the sentencer in predicting the defendant’s future conduct, it also tells the sentencer something about the defendant’s personality. Importantly, for example, it may suggest that the conduct of which the defendant stands convicted was not in keeping with his or her usual qualities or traits, a fact that has as much relevance to culpability as to future dangerousness. Further, the evidence of petitioner’s past prison conduct was relevant to show the appropriateness of the alternative punishment of imprison*191ment for him, another reflection of his character. Thus evidence of petitioner’s conduct in prison “encompassed . . . more than [just] those matters . . . considered by the jury when it was asked to answer the second Special Issue,” ante, at 178, which asked only if there was a probability that petitioner would commit future criminal acts of violence.
“The fundamental respect for humanity underlying the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment gives rise to a special ‘need for reliability in the determination that death is the appropriate punishment’ in any capital case.” Johnson v. Mississippi, 486 U. S. 578, 584 (1988). For that reason, when it is “considering whether to impose a death sentence the jury may be asked to consider whatever evidence of mitigating circumstances the defense can bring before it.” Jurek v. Texas, 428 U. S. 262, 273 (1976) (joint opinion). If mitigating evidence is relevant to the sentencing determination, a defendant has a right to have the jury consider it even if an appellate court may question its weight.
Our cases explicating the role of mitigating evidence in capital sentencing have rigorously enforced one simple rule: A sentencing jury must be given the authority to reject imposition of the death penalty on the basis of any evidence relevant to the defendant’s character or record or the circumstances of the offense proffered by the defendant in support of a sentence less than death. That rule does not merely require that the jury be allowed to hear any such evidence the defendant desires to introduce, Skipper v. South Carolina, 476 U. S., at 4; Hitchcock v. Dugger, 481 U. S. 393, 394 (1987), it also requires that the jury be allowed to give “independent mitigating weight” to the evidence. Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U. S. 586, 605 (1978);1 Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 *192U. S. 104, 112-113 (1982). We therefore consistently have condemned the erection of barriers to the jury’s full consideration of mitigating evidence without regard to the device by which the barrier was created. Mills v. Maryland, 486 U. S. 367, 375 (1988); see Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U. S., at 586 (statute); Hitchcock v. Dugger, 481 U. S., at 398-399 (same); by the sentencing court, Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 U. S., at 104 (sentencing court decision); Skipper v. South Carolina, 476 U. S., at 1 (evidentiary ruling).
On its face, the Texas capital sentencing scheme makes no mention of mitigating evidence. Jurek, 428 U. S., at 272. Instead it merely asks the jury to give a “yes” or “no” answer to two, and in some instances three, “Special Issues.” Here the jury was instructed to answer “yes” to the first Special Issue if it found that petitioner acted “deliberately” and “with the reasonable expectation that [her] death . . . would result” when he assaulted Ms. Moran and “yes” to the second Special Issue if it found a probability that petitioner “would commit criminal acts of violence that would constitute a continuing threat to society.” See, ante, at 168-169, and n.. 3. Although the jury was informed that if it answered both issues “yes” petitioner would be sentenced to death, neither of the Special Issues as they would have been understood by reasonable jurors gave the jury the opportunity to consider petitioner’s mitigating evidence of past good conduct in prison to the extent that it encompassed matters beyond those relevant to answering the Special Issues. Petitioner therefore was at least entitled to an instruction informing the jury that it could answer one of the issues “no” if it found by that evidence that petitioner’s character was such that he should not be subjected to the ultimate penalty. The failure to give such an instruction removed that evidence from the sen-*193tencer’s consideration just as effectively as would have an instruction informing the jury that petitioner’s character was irrelevant to its sentencing decision.
The plurality errs in suggesting that under our precedents Texas may “structure]” or “giv[e] shape”, ante, at 179, to the jury’s consideration of character as a mitigating factor by defining character to include only that evidence that reflects on future dangerousness, ante, at 177-178. The notion that a State may permissibly provide such a “framework” for the sentencer’s discharge of its “awesome power,” ante, at 179, is inconsistent with our holdings in Lockett and Hitchcock that a State may not limit the sentencer’s consideration to certain enumerated mitigating factors. There is no constitutionally meaningful distinction between allowing the jury to hear all the evidence the defendant would like to introduce and then telling the jury to consider that evidence, only to the extent that it is probative of one of the enumerated mitigating circumstances, which we held unconstitutional in both Lockett and Hitchcock, and allowing the jury to hear whatever evidence the defendant would like to introduce and then telling the jury to consider that evidence only to the extent that it is probative of future dangerousness, which the plurality here finds constitutional.
Petitioner does not contend that the jury required special instructions in order to give complete consideration to any mitigating evidence that was relevant to whether he acted deliberately or to whether he constituted a future threat to society. His argument is limited to the rather simple truism that absent some instruction, given the structure of the Texas scheme, it is probable that the jury misapprehended the significance it could attach to mitigating evidence- that was descriptive of petitioner’s character rather than predictive of his future behavior. The instructions he sought would only have informed the jury that it could answer either or both of the Special Issues “no” if it found that the mitigating evidence justified a sentence less than death — whether or *194not that evidence was relevant to deliberateness or future dangerousness — authority the jury assuredly had under the Constitution and under the Texas sentencing scheme as we have previously construed it. See Jurek, 428 U. S., at 273; Adams v. Texas, 448 U. S. 38, 46 (1980). Although it is remotely possible that the jury that sentenced petitioner intuitively understood that possibility, the Constitution does not permit us to take the risk that the jury did not give full consideration to the mitigating evidence petitioner introduced. Mills v. Maryland, 486 U. S., at 383-384. Under our cases, the substantial risk that the jury failed to perceive the full ambit of consideration to which evidence of petitioner’s past good conduct was entitled requires us to vacate the death sentence and remand for resentencing. Id., at 384; Eddings, 455 U. S., at 119 (O’Connor, J., concurring). Chief Justice Burger’s words in Lockett apply fully and determinate^ to the case before us:
“There is no perfect procedure for deciding in which cases governmental authority should be uséd to impose death. But a statute [or evidentiary rulé or jury instruction] that prevents the sentencer in'all capital cases from giving independent mitigating weight to aspects of the defendant’s character and record and to circumstances of the offense proffered in mitigation creates the risk that the death penalty will be imposed in spite of factors which may call for a less severe penalty. When the choice is between life and death, that risk is unacceptable and incompatible with the commands of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments.” 438 U. S., at 605.
II
The plurality introduces its discussion of general principles concerning the role of mitigating evidence in capital sentencing with the gratuitous advice that it is not inclined to overrule Jurek v. Texas, 428 U. S. 262 (1976), see ante, at 180. The observation that we rejected a facial challenge to the *195constitutionality of the Texas statute in that case is, of course, entirely irrelevant here. As the plurality recognizes, ante, at 171, petitioner has not raised a challenge to the constitutionality of the Texas sentencing scheme. Rather, he has merely asserted that the trial court’s failure to give the jury instructions he requested was constitutional error.
Our holding in Lockett previously has required us to vacate death sentences that were imposed pursuant to facially valid capital sentencing statutes. In Eddings v. Oklahoma, although the statute provided that a defendant could present evidence “as to any mitigating circumstances,” 455 U. S., at 115, n. 10, we set aside the death sentence because it appeared that the trial judge had not considered certain mitigating evidence offered by defendant. See id., at 112-113. In Hitchcock, 481 U. S., at 398-399, even though we had sustained the Florida capital sentencing statute against a facial attack in Proffitt v. Florida, 428 U. S. 242 (1976), we held that a Florida death sentence could not stand because the advisory jury had been instructed not to consider nonstatutory mitigating circumstances. The instant case is analogous; our decision in Jurek v. Texas, upholding the facial validity of the statute under which petitioner was sentenced to death is not dispositive of the question whether his Eighth Amendment rights were violated because the sentencer was in effect instructed not to consider certain relevant mitigating evidence.
After referring to “tension” between our cases holding that the sentencer’s discretion in capital sentencing must be “directed and limited so as to minimize the risk of wholly arbitrary and capricious action,” Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U. S. 153, 189 (1976), and our cases holding that the jury must be permitted to consider any relevant mitigating evidence adduced by the defendant, see Eddings v. Oklahoma, the plurality suggests that our holding in Jurek was premised on a recognition that Texas’ scheme accommodated that tension. See *196ante, at 182. To the contrary, our holding in Jurek did not turn on an understanding that the Special Issues performed a narrowing function; rather our concern there, as it is here, was whether the Special Issues interfered with the jury’s full consideration of mitigating evidence.
Instead of employing a list of aggravating circumstances to limit, the scope of the jury’s power to impose the death penalty, the Texas scheme defines the offense of capital murder in a manner that narrows the class. See Lowenfield v. Phelps, 484 U. S. 231, 245-246 (1988). This point was explained with some care in the joint opinion in Jurek:
“The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has thus far affirmed only two judgments imposing death sentences under its post-Furman law — in this case and in Smith v. State, No. 49,809 (Feb. 18, 1976). ... In the present case the state appellate court noted that its law ‘limits the circumstances under which the State may seek the death penalty to a small group of narrowly defined and particularly brutal offenses. This insures that the death penalty will only be imposed for the most serious crimes [and]. . . that [it] will only be imposed for the same type of offenses which occur under the same types of circumstances.’ 522 S. W. 2d, at 939.
“While Texas has not adopted a list of statutory aggravating circumstances the existence of which can justify the imposition of the death penalty as have Georgia and Florida, its action in narrowing the categories of murders for which a death sentence may ever be imposed serves much the same purpose. See McGautha v. California, 402 U. S. 183, 206, n. 16 (1971); Model Penal Code §201.6, Comment 3, pp. 71-72 (Tent. Draft No. 9, 1959). In fact, each of the five classes of murders made capital by the Texas statute is encompassed in Georgia and Florida by one or more of their statutory aggravat*197ing circumstances. For example, the Texas statute requires the jury at the guilt-determining stage to consider whether the crime was committed in the course of a particular felony, whether it was committed for hire, or whether the defendant was an inmate of a penal institution at the time of its commission. Cf. Gregg v. Georgia, ante, at 165-166, n. 9; Proffitt v. Florida, ante, at 248-249, n. 6. Thus, in essence, the Texas statute requires that the jury find the existence of a statutory aggravating circumstance before the death penalty may be imposed. So far as consideration of aggravating circumstances is concerned, therefore, the principal difference between Texas and the other two States is that the death penalty is an available sentencing option — even potentially — for a smaller class of murders in Texas. Otherwise the statutes are similar. Each requires the sentencing authority to focus on the particularized nature of the crime.” 428 U. S., at 270-271.
Having approved the manner in which the Texas statute narrowed the class of murders for which the death sentence could be imposed, we confronted directly the question whether the Texas statute was nevertheless invalid because the Special Issues might interfere with the requirement that the jury must be allowed to consider “all relevant evidence” offered to demonstrate why the death penalty “should not be imposed.”2 Although the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals had not yet precisely defined the meanings of the terms used in the Special Issues, we understood the two decided cases on the question to indicate that the jury would be given a full opportunity “to consider whatever evidence of mitigating circumstances the defense can bring before it.” Id., at 273. Thus, nothing in Jurek implies that the Special Issues could *198be used to curtail the defendant’s right to have the sentencing decision made on the basis of all relevant mitigating evidence.
It is important to recognize that our holdings that the jury-must be given the opportunity to consider, for whatever weight it might bear, any evidence relevant to a defendant’s character or record or the circumstances of the offense do not give rise to the danger of arbitrary, capricious, and discriminatory decisionmaking that attends the vesting of unbridled discretion in the sentencer. We recognized this fact in Gregg v. Georgia, when we upheld Georgia’s sentencing scheme against an Eighth Amendment challenge. The Georgia scheme permitted the jury to consider all mitigating evidence the defendant wished to introduce, but our decision nowhere suggested that in so doing the statute failed sufficiently to narrow and guide the discretion of the sentencer. We specifically noted that the existence of discretion to remove a particular defendant from the class of persons on whom death may be imposed did not offend the Constitution, see 428 U. S., at 199, 203; this is especially so when the sentencer is directed to exercise that discretion on the basis of evidence related to the defendant’s crime or record or the circumstances of the offense. As Justice White stated:
“The Georgia Legislature has plainly made an effort to guide the jury in the exercise of its discretion, while at the same time permitting the jury to dispense mercy on the basis of factors too intangible to write into a statute, and I cannot accept the naked assertion that the effort is bound to fail. As the types of murders for which the death penalty may be imposed become more narrowly defined and are limited to those which are particularly serious or for which the death penalty is peculiarly appropriate as they are in Georgia by reason of the aggravating-circumstance requirement, it becomes reasonable to expect that juries — even given discretion not to impose the death penalty — will impose the death pen*199alty in a substantial portion of the eases so defined. If they do, it can no longer be said that the penalty is being imposed wantonly and freakishly or so infrequently that it loses its usefulness as a sentencing device.” Id., at 222 (opinion concurring in judgment)
In requiring that the discretion of the sentencer in capital sentencing be guided, we have never suggested that the sen-tencer’s discretion could be guided by blinding it to relevant evidence. The hallmark of a sentencing scheme that sufficiently guides and directs the sentencer is the presence of procedures that “require the jury to consider the circumstances of the crime and the criminal before it recommends sentence.” Id., at 197. The requirement that the State not bar the sentencer from considering any mitigating aspect of the offense or the offender only furthers the goal of focusing the sentencer’s attention on the defendant and the particular circumstances of the crime.
If, as the plurality suggests, see ante, at 182, the Texas scheme limits the sentencer’s consideration to only that mitigating evidence that bears on one or more of the Special Issues, then it is constitutionally infirm. The requirement that the sentencer’s discretion be guided and channeled was intended to enlighten the jury’s decisionmaking process, not to license the States to place blinders on juries. A scheme that permitted the sentencer to disregard evidence relevant to an understanding of the crime and the person who committed it would create tension with our cases requiring that the sentencing scheme be one that focuses the sentencer’s attention on such evidence and with our cases requiring that the sentencer be permitted to consider all relevant mitigating evidence.
The joint opinion in Jitrek reflects our concern about whether the Texas scheme would allow the jury to give proper weight to mitigating evidence. The Court merely found it reasonable to rely on evidence that the Special Issues “were written to direct and guide the jury’s deliberations and *200to focus their attention . . . upon the presence of any possible mitigating factors,” Brief for Respondent in Jurek v. Texas, O. T. 1975, No. 5394, p. 26 (emphasis added), and that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals had interpreted the second Special Issue to allow the jury “to consider whatever evidence of mitigating circumstances the defense can bring before it.” Jurek, 428 U. S., at 273.
As we said in Jurek: “What is essential is that the jury have before it all possible relevant information about the individual defendant whose fate it must determine. Texas law clearly assures that all such evidence will be adduced.” Id., at 276. The essential requirement we found satisfied in Jurek was not met in this case. If the Texas scheme is as we found it to be in Jurek, this shortcoming was merely the result of an error in instructing the jury. No matter what the ultimate cause is determined to be, however, it is clear that petitioner’s Eighth Amendment rights were violated and that the violation would not have occurred had the trial court given the jury the instructions sought by petitioner.
I respectfully dissent.

 Although only four Members of the Court endorsed the entire opinion written by Chief Justice Burger in Lockett, it has the same precedential value as a Court opinion because Justice Marshall’s vote to set aside the death penalty rested on a broader ground than did the plurality’s. See *192Marks v. United States, 430 U. S. 188, 193 (1977) (when no single rationale supporting the result commands a majority of the Court, “the holding of the Court may be viewed as that position taken by those Members who concurred in the judgments on the narrowest grounds”).

 As the joint opinion emphasized:
“A jury must be allowed to consider on the basis of all relevant evidence not only why a death sentence should be imposed, but also why it should not be imposed.” 428 U. S., at 271.