Cite as: 505 U. S. 333 (1992)
Stevens, J., concurring in judgment
Court requires a petitioner to refute his eligibility for the death penalty. This narrow definition of "innocence of the death sentence" fails to recognize that, in rare cases, even though a defendant is eligible for the death penalty, such a sentence may nonetheless constitute a fundamental miscarriage of justice.
It is well established that, "in capital cases, the sentencer may not refuse to consider or be precluded from considering any relevant mitigating evidence." Hitchcock v. Dugger, 481 U. S. 393, 394 (1987) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). Yet in ascribing a narrow, eligibility-based meaning to "innocence of the death sentence" the Court neglects this rudimentary principle.
As the Court recognizes, a single general directive animates and informs our capital-punishment jurisprudence: "[T]he death penalty [may not] be imposed under sentencing procedures that creat[e] a substantial risk that [the death penalty] would be inflicted in an arbitrary and capricious manner." Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U. S. 153, 188 (1976) (opinion of Stewart, Powell, and Stevens, JJ.). As applied and developed over the years, this constitutional requirement has yielded two central principles. First, a sentencing scheme must "genuinely narrow the class of persons eligible for the death penalty." Zant v. Stephens, 462 U. S. 862, 877 (1983). Second, the sentencer must "not be precluded from considering, as a mitigating factor, any aspect of a defendant's character or record and any of the circumstances of the offense that the defendant proffers as a basis for a sentence less than death." Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U. S. 586, 604 (1978) (opinion of Burger, C. J.) (emphasis in original). Although these principles—one narrowing the relevant class, the other broadening the scope of considered evidence—seemingly point in opposite directions, in fact both serve the same end: ensuring that a capital sentence is the product of individualized and reasoned moral decisionmaking.
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