518
Souter, J., dissenting
crime. Youth may be understood to mitigate by reducing a defendant's moral culpability for the crime, for which emotional and cognitive immaturity and inexperience with life render him less responsible, see Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 U. S., at 115-116, and youthfulness may also be seen as mitigating just because it is transitory, indicating that the defendant is less likely to be dangerous in the future.
As with Penry's evidence of mental retardation, the mitigating force of Graham's youth could not be fully accounted for under the first, "deliberateness" issue, given the trial judge's explanation of that issue to the jury. While no formal jury instruction explained what "deliberate" meant, the judge emphasized at voir dire that "deliberate" meant simply "intentional," see App. 90, 127, 169, 205-206, 246, 291, 319- 320, 353, 420, a definition that hardly allowed exhaustion of the mitigating force of youth. A young person may perfectly well commit a crime "intentionally," but our prior cases hold that his youth may nonetheless be treated as limiting his moral culpability because he " 'lack[s] the experience, perspective, and judgment' expected of adults." Eddings, supra, at 116 (quoting Bellotti v. Baird, 443 U. S. 622, 635 (1979)).
We have already noted that the Court of Appeals answered this difficulty by reasoning that the "major mitigating thrust" of the evidence could be given effect under the second special issue calling for assessment of future dangerousness. The errors of this view we have also seen. First, nothing in Penry suggests that partial consideration of the mitigating effect of the evidence satisfies the Constitution. Penry, like Eddings and the Lockett plurality before that, states an Eighth Amendment demand that the sentencer "consider and give effect to . . . mitigating evidence" "fully," 492 U. S., at 318, and when such evidence "has relevance to . . . moral culpability beyond the scope of the special issues," constitutional standards require a separate instruction au-
Page: Index Previous 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007