Graham v. Collins, 506 U.S. 461, 61 (1993)

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Cite as: 506 U. S. 461 (1993)

Souter, J., dissenting

be treated as aggravating under the future dangerousness issue, and it has no mitigating potential under the third issue of provocation. Again, as with youth, there is no room in the former Texas special issues as applied in this case to take full account of such mitigating relevance as the jury might find.

3

Finally, Graham argues that the jury was unable to take account of redeeming character traits revealed by evidence that growing up he had voluntarily helped his parents and grandparents with household chores, that he was a religious person who had attended church regularly with his grandmother, and that he had contributed to the support of his own children with money earned from a job with his father.

I do not accept petitioner's contention that the jury could not give adequate consideration to the testimony on these matters. Insofar as the evidence tended to paint Graham as a person unlikely to pose a future danger, the jury could consider it under the second special issue. Insofar as the jury was unable, as Graham alleges, to give the evidence further effect to diminish Graham's "moral culpability," Brief for Petitioner 36, 37, 39, it is enough to say that the relevance of the evidence to moral culpability was simply de minimis. Voluntary chores for and church attendance with a relative, and supplying some level of support for one's children have virtually no bearing on one's culpability for crime in the way that immaturity or permanent damage due to events in childhood may. Because I do not understand petitioner to be arguing that the jury should have been allowed to consider the evidence as revealing some element of value unrelated to the circumstances of the crime, see Franklin, 487 U. S., at 186 (O'Connor, J., concurring in judgment); id., at 189 (Stevens, J., dissenting), I do not address that issue.

521

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