Cite as: 509 U. S. 350 (1993)
Syllabus
general matter, the special issues system satisfied the foregoing constitutional requirements, the Court later held, in Penry v. Lynaugh, supra, that the system did not allow for sufficient consideration of the defendant's mitigating evidence of his mental retardation and childhood abuse in light of his particular circumstances, id., at 320-323, and that the trial court erred in not instructing the jury that it could consider and give effect to that mitigating evidence by declining to impose the death penalty, id., at 328. However, the Court concluded that it was not creating a new rule, and characterized its holding as a straightforward application of Jurek, Lockett, and Eddings, making it clear that these cases can stand together with Penry, see 492 U. S., at 314-318. The Court confirmed this limited view of Penry and its scope in Graham v. Collins, 506 U. S. 461, 474, and held that the defendant's mitigating evidence of his youth, family background, and positive character traits was not placed beyond the jury's effective reach by the Texas scheme, id., at 475. Pp. 362-366. (c) The Texas special issues allowed adequate consideration of Johnson's youth. There is no reasonable likelihood, see Boyde, supra, at 380, that Johnson's jury would have found itself foreclosed from considering the relevant aspects of his youth, since it received the second special issue instruction and was told to consider all mitigating evidence. That there is ample room in the future dangerousness assessment for a juror to take account of youth as a mitigating factor is what distinguishes this case from Penry, supra, at 323. There, the second special issue did not allow the jury to give mitigating effect to expert medical testimony that the defendant's mental retardation prevented him from learning from experience, since that evidence could only logically be considered within the future dangerousness inquiry as an aggravating factor. In contrast, youth's ill effects are subject to change as a defendant ages and, as a result, are readily comprehended as a mitigating factor in consideration of the second special issue. Because such consideration is a comprehensive inquiry that is more than a question of historical fact, the Court rejects Johnson's related arguments that the second special issue's forward-looking perspective and narrowness prevented the jury from, respectively, taking account of how his youth bore upon his personal culpability and making a "reasoned moral response" to the evidence of his youth. For the Court to find a constitutional defect in Johnson's sentence, it would have to overrule Jurek by requiring a further instruction whenever a defendant introduced mitigating evidence that had some arguable relevance beyond the special issues; alter the rule of Lockett and Eddings to require that a jury be able to give effect to mitigating evidence in every conceivable manner in which it might be
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