312
Souter, J., concurring in judgment
different, unrelated crime. Id., at 682. Butler argued that he could invoke Roberson's rule because it was "merely an application of Edwards [v. Arizona, 451 U. S. 477 (1981)]," in which we held that, if a person is in custody on suspicion of a crime, the police must stop questioning him about that crime once he invokes his right to counsel, id., at 484-485, "to a slightly different set of facts." 494 U. S., at 414. We rejected this argument, saying that it "would not have been an illogical or even a grudging application of Edwards to decide that it did not extend to the facts of Roberson." Id., at 415.
Likewise, in Sawyer, supra, the petitioner sought the benefit of Caldwell v. Mississippi, 472 U. S. 320 (1985), which had been announced after Sawyer's conviction was final. We held in Caldwell that the Eighth Amendment prohibits resting "a death sentence on a determination made by a sentencer who has been led to believe that the responsibility for determining the appropriateness of the defendant's death rests elsewhere." Id., at 328-329. Sawyer argued that he was entitled to the benefit of Caldwell's rule as having been "dictated by the principle of reliability in capital sentencing," Sawyer, supra, at 236, which, he said, had been established by cases announced before his conviction became final, Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 U. S. 104 (1982), and Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U. S. 586 (1978), among them. We rejected the argument, saying that
"the [Teague] test would be meaningless if applied at this level of generality. Cf. Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U. S. 635, 639 (1987) ('[I]f the test of "clearly established law" were to be applied at this level of generality, . . . [p]laintiffs would be able to convert the rule of qualified immunity that our cases plainly establish into a rule of virtually unqualified liability simply by alleging violation of extremely abstract rights')." 497 U. S., at 236 (internal quotation brackets in original).
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