12
Opinion of the Court
the admissibility of evidence at capital sentencing proceedings. We have not done so in the past, however, and we will not do so today. The Eighth Amendment does not establish a federal code of evidence to supersede state evidentiary rules in capital sentencing proceedings. Cf. Payne v. Tennessee, 501 U. S. 808, 824-825 (1991); Blystone, 494 U. S., at 309.
Petitioner finally argues that the introduction of the evidence in question violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. It is settled that this Clause applies to the sentencing phase of capital trials. See, e. g., Payne, supra, at 825; Clemons, supra, at 746 ("[C]apital sentencing proceedings must of course satisfy the dictates of the Due Process Clause").
We believe the proper analytical framework in which to consider this claim is found in Donnelly v. DeChristoforo, 416 U. S. 637, 643 (1974). There we addressed a claim that remarks made by the prosecutor during his closing argument were so prejudicial as to violate the defendant's due process rights. We noted that the case was not one in which the State had denied a defendant the benefit of a specific constitutional right, such as the right to counsel, or in which the remarks so prejudiced a specific right as to amount to a denial of that right. Id., at 643. Accordingly, we sought to determine whether the prosecutor's remark "so infected the trial with unfairness as to make the resulting conviction a denial of due process." Ibid. We concluded, after an "examination of the entire proceedings," that the remarks did not amount to a denial of constitutional due process. Ibid.
The relevant question in this case, therefore, is whether the admission of evidence regarding petitioner's prior death sentence so infected the sentencing proceeding with unfairness as to render the jury's imposition of the death penalty a denial of due process. See Sawyer, 497 U. S., at 244 (observing that "[t]he Caldwell rule was . . . added to [Donnelly's] existing guarantee of due process protection against
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