Caspari v. Bohlen, 510 U.S. 383, 13 (1994)

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Cite as: 510 U. S. 383 (1994)

Opinion of the Court

ble Jeopardy Clause inapplicable to noncapital sentencing prior to 1986. Durham v. State, supra; People v. Sailor, supra. Constitutional law is not the exclusive province of the federal courts, and in the Teague analysis the reasonable views of state courts are entitled to consideration along with those of federal courts. See Butler v. McKellar, 494 U. S. 407, 414 (1990).

In sum, at the time respondent's conviction and sentence became final this Court had not applied the Double Jeopardy Clause to noncapital sentencing, and indeed several of our cases pointed in the opposite direction. Two Federal Courts of Appeals and several state courts had reached conflicting holdings on the issue. Because that conflict concerned a "developmen[t] in the law over which reasonable jurists [could] disagree," Sawyer v. Smith, 497 U. S. 227, 234 (1990), the Court of Appeals erred in resolving it in respondent's favor.

Finally, to the limited extent our cases decided subsequent to the time respondent's conviction and sentence became final have any relevance to the Teague analysis, cf. Graham v. Collins, 506 U. S., at 472, 477, they are entirely consistent with our conclusion that the Court of Appeals announced a new rule in this case. See Lockhart v. Nelson, 488 U. S. 33, 37-38, n. 6 (1988) (reserving question whether Double Jeopardy Clause applies to noncapital sentencing); see also Poland v. Arizona, 476 U. S. 147, 155 (1986) ("Bullington indicates that the proper inquiry is whether the sentencer or reviewing court has 'decided that the prosecution has not proved its case' that the death penalty is appropriate") (emphasis in original); Hunt v. New York, 502 U. S. 964 (1991) (White, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari) (noting conflict on the question "whether the Double Jeopardy Clause applies to trial-like sentence enhancement proceedings in noncapital cases"). Because "[t]he 'new rule' principle . . . validates reasonable, good-faith interpretations of existing precedents made by state courts even though they are shown

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