Cite as: 509 U. S. 350 (1993)
Opinion of the Court
Amendments. See Woodson, supra, at 305; Roberts, supra, at 335-336.
Two Terms later, a plurality of the Court in Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U. S. 586 (1978), refined the requirements related to the consideration of mitigating evidence by a capital sentencer. Unlike the mandatory schemes struck down in Woodson and Roberts in which all mitigating evidence was excluded, the Ohio system at issue in Lockett permitted a limited range of mitigating circumstances to be considered by the sentencer.4 The plurality nonetheless found this system to be unconstitutional, holding that "the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments require that the sentencer . . . not be precluded from considering, as a mitigating factor, any aspect of a defendant's character or record and any of the circumstances of the offense that the defendant proffers as a basis for a sentence less than death." 438 U. S., at 604. A majority of the Court adopted the Lockett rule in Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 U. S. 104 (1982); accord, Hitchcock v. Dugger, 481 U. S. 393, 398-399 (1987); Skipper v. South Carolina, 476 U. S. 1, 4 (1986), and we have not altered the rule's central requirement. "Lockett and its progeny stand only for the proposition that a State may not cut off in an absolute manner the presentation of mitigating evidence, either by statute or judicial instruction, or by limiting the inquiries to which it is relevant so severely that the evidence could never be part of the sentencing decision at all." McKoy v. North Carolina, 494 U. S. 433, 456 (1990) (Kennedy, J., concurring
4 Once an Ohio defendant was found guilty of aggravated murder involving at least one of seven aggravating circumstances, the judge was required to sentence the defendant to death unless at least one of three mitigating circumstances was present: (1) the victim induced or facilitated the offense; (2) it is unlikely the crime would have been committed but for the fact that the defendant was acting under duress, coercion, or strong provocation; or (3) the offense was primarily the product of the defendant's psychosis or mental deficiency. See Lockett, 438 U. S., at 607-608.
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