Cite as: 508 U. S. 333 (1993)
Opinion of the Court
Kaplan, Solicitor General, and Terence M. Madsen, Marcia L. Friedl, and Steven J. Zick, Assistant Attorneys General. Lawrence C. Marshall, by appointment of the Court, 506
U. S. 1018, argued the cause for respondent. With him on the brief were Roy T. Englert, Jr., Robert Agostinelli, and Timothy P. O'Neill.*
Chief Justice Rehnquist delivered the opinion of the Court.†
Respondent Kevin Taylor was convicted of murder by an Illinois jury and sentenced to 35 years' imprisonment. After his conviction and sentence became final, he sought federal habeas relief on the ground that the jury instructions given at his trial violated the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause. The Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit granted relief on the basis of its recent decision in Falconer v. Lane, 905 F. 2d 1129 (1990), which held that the Illinois pattern jury instructions on murder and voluntary manslaughter were unconstitutional because they allowed a jury to return a murder verdict without considering whether the defendant possessed a mental state that would support a voluntary-manslaughter verdict instead. We conclude that the rule announced in Falconer was not dictated by prior precedent and is therefore "new" within the meaning of Teague v. Lane, 489 U. S. 288 (1989). Accordingly, the Falconer rule may not provide the basis for federal habeas relief in respondent's case.
Early one morning in September 1985, respondent became involved in a dispute with his former wife and her live-in
*Kent S. Scheidegger and Charles L. Hobson filed a brief for the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation as amicus curiae urging reversal.
Briefs of amici curiae urging affirmance were filed for the American
Civil Liberties Union et al. by Larry W. Yackle, Steven R. Shapiro, Leslie A. Harris, John A. Powell, and Harvey Grossman; and for Nicholas deB. Katzenbach et al. by George N. Leighton and George H. Kendall.
†Justice Souter joins all but footnote 3 of this opinion.
335
Page: Index Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007