Cite as: 509 U. S. 350 (1993)
O'Connor, J., dissenting
I
By all accounts, Dorsie Johnson was not a model youth. As an adolescent he frequently missed school, and when he did attend, he often was disruptive. He was drinking and using drugs by the time he was 16, habits that had intensified by the time he was 19. Johnson's father testified that the deaths of Johnson's mother and sister in 1984 and 1985 had affected Johnson deeply, but he primarily attributed Johnson's behavior to drug use and youth. A jury hearing this evidence easily could conclude, as Johnson's jury did, that the answer to the second Texas special question—whether it was probable that Johnson "would commit criminal acts of violence that would constitute a continuing threat to society," Tex. Code Crim. Proc. Ann., Art. 37.071(b)(2) (Vernon 1981)—was yes. It is possible that the jury thought Johnson might outgrow his temper and violent behavior as he matured, but it is more likely that the jury considered the pattern of escalating violence to be an indication that Johnson would become even more dangerous as he grew older. Even if the jurors viewed Johnson's youth as a transient circumstance, the dangerousness associated with that youth would not dissipate until sometime in the future, and it is reasonably likely that the jurors still would have understood the second question to require an affirmative answer. See Graham v. Collins, 506 U. S. 461, 519-520 (1993) (Souter, J., dissenting). Thus, to the extent that Johnson's youth was relevant at all to the second Texas special issue, there is a reasonable likelihood that it was an aggravating factor.
But even if the jury could give some mitigating effect to youth under the second special issue, the Constitution still would require an additional instruction in this case. The additional instruction would be required because not one of the special issues under the former Texas scheme, see Art. 37.071, allows a jury to give effect to the most relevant mitigating aspect of youth: its relation to a defendant's "culpability for the crime he committed." Skipper v. South Caro-
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