Cite as: 504 U. S. 719 (1992)
Scalia, J., dissenting
consider all relevant mitigating evidence' ") (emphasis added) (quoting Blystone v. Pennsylvania, 494 U. S. 299, 307 (1990)); Saffle v. Parks, 494 U. S. 484, 490 (1990) ("[T]he State cannot bar relevant mitigating evidence") (emphasis added); McKoy v. North Carolina, 494 U. S. 433, 442-443 (1990) ("[E]ach juror [must] be permitted to consider and give effect to mitigating evidence") (emphasis added); Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U. S. 302, 318 (1989) (a State may not "prevent the sentencer from considering and giving effect to [mitigating] evidence") (emphasis added); id., at 328 ( jury must be "provided with a vehicle for expressing its 'reasoned moral response' to that evidence in rendering its sentencing decision") (emphasis added); Mills v. Maryland, 486 U. S. 367, 375 (1988) (State may not impose any "barrier to the sentencer's consideration of all mitigating evidence") (emphasis added); Turner v. Murray, 476 U. S. 28, 34 (1986) (plurality opinion) (sentencer "must be free to weigh relevant mitigating evidence'') (emphasis added); Roberts v. Louisiana, 431 U. S. 633, 637 (1977) (mandatory death penalty statute is unconstitutional because it "does not allow for consideration of particularized mitigating factors") (emphasis added); Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U. S. 280, 303 (1976) (plurality opinion) (same); Jurek v. Texas, 428 U. S. 262, 271 (1976) (opinion of Stewart, Powell, and Stevens, JJ.) ("A jury must be allowed to consider . . . all relevant [mitigating] evidence") (emphasis added). Similarly, where the judge is the final sentencer we have held, not that he must consider mitigating evidence, but only that he may not, on legal grounds, refuse to consider it, Hitchcock v. Dugger, 481 U. S. 393, 394, 398-399 (1987); Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 U. S. 104, 113-114 (1982) (a sentencing judge may not "refuse to consider, as a matter of law, any relevant mitigating evidence") (emphasis in original). Woodson and Lockett meant to ensure that the sentencing jury would function as a "link between contemporary community values and the penal system," Witherspoon, 391 U. S., at 519, n. 15; they did not mean to specify what the content of those values
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