Cite as: 509 U. S. 350 (1993)
Opinion of the Court
ation of the second special issue, the court reasoned that "[i]f a juror believed that [petitioner's] violent actions were a result of his youth, that same juror would naturally believe that [petitioner] would cease to behave violently as he grew older." App. 180. The court concluded that "the jury was able to express a reasoned moral response to [petitioner's] mitigating evidence within the scope of the art. 37.071 instructions given to them by the trial court." Id., at 180-181.
Petitioner filed a petition for certiorari, which we granted. 506 U. S. 1090 (1993).
II
A
This is the latest in a series of decisions in which the Court has explained the requirements imposed by the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments regarding consideration of mitigating circumstances by sentencers in capital cases. The earliest case in the decisional line is Furman v. Georgia, 408 U. S. 238 (1972). At the time of Furman, sentencing juries had almost complete discretion in determining whether a given defendant would be sentenced to death, resulting in a system in which there was "no meaningful basis for distinguishing the few cases in which [death was] imposed from the many cases in which it [was] not." Id., at 313 (White, J., concurring). Although no two Justices could agree on a single rationale, a majority of the Court in Furman concluded that this system was "cruel and unusual" within the meaning of the Eighth Amendment. The guiding principle that emerged from Furman was that States were required to channel the discretion of sentencing juries in order to avoid a system in which the death penalty would be imposed in a "wanto[n]" and "freakis[h]" manner. Id., at 310 (Stewart, J., concurring).
Four Terms after Furman, we decided five cases, in opinions issued on the same day, concerning the constitutionality of various capital sentencing systems. Gregg v. Georgia,
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