434
Blackmun, J., dissenting
legitimacy of punishment is inextricably intertwined with guilt.
Beck makes this clear. In Beck, the petitioner was convicted of the capital crime of robbery-intentional killing. Under Alabama law, however, the trial court was prohibited from giving the jury the option of convicting him of the lesser included offense of felony murder. We held that precluding the instruction injected an impermissible element of uncertainty into the guilt phase of the trial.
"To insure that the death penalty is indeed imposed on the basis of 'reason rather than caprice or emotion,' we have invalidated procedural rules that tended to diminish the reliability of the sentencing determination. The same reasoning must apply to rules that diminish the reliability of the guilt determination. Thus, if the unavailability of a lesser included offense instruction enhances the risk of an unwarranted conviction, [the State] is constitutionally prohibited from withdrawing that option in a capital case." Id., at 638 (footnote omitted).
The decision in Beck establishes that, at least in capital cases, the Eighth Amendment requires more than reliability in sentencing. It also mandates a reliable determination of guilt. See also Spaziano v. Florida, 468 U. S., at 456.
The Court also suggests that allowing petitioner to raise his claim of innocence would not serve society's interest in the reliable imposition of the death penalty because it might require a new trial that would be less accurate than the first. Ante, at 403-404. This suggestion misses the point entirely. The question is not whether a second trial would be more reliable than the first but whether, in light of new evidence, the result of the first trial is sufficiently reliable for the State to carry out a death sentence. Furthermore, it is far from clear that a State will seek to retry the rare prisoner who prevails on a claim of actual innocence. As explained in Part III, infra, I believe a prisoner must show not just that there
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