Cite as: 520 U. S. 518 (1997)
Opinion of the Court
ment Motion for Clarification and/or Modification of Opinion before the Court of Appeals, reprinted at App. 176. A State's procedural rules are of vital importance to the orderly administration of its criminal courts; when a federal court permits them to be readily evaded, it undermines the criminal justice system. We do not mean to suggest that the procedural-bar issue must invariably be resolved first; only that it ordinarily should be. Judicial economy might counsel giving the Teague question priority, for example, if it were easily resolvable against the habeas petitioner, whereas the procedural-bar issue involved complicated issues of state law. Cf. 28 U. S. C. § 2254(b)(2) (permitting a federal court to deny a habeas petition on the merits notwithstanding the applicant's failure to exhaust state remedies).
Despite our puzzlement at the Court of Appeals' failure to resolve this case on the basis of procedural bar, we hesitate to resolve it on that basis ourselves. Lambrix asserts several reasons why his claim is not procedurally barred, which seem to us insubstantial but may not be so; as we have repeatedly recognized, the courts of appeals and district courts are more familiar than we with the procedural practices of the States in which they regularly sit, see, e. g., Rummel v. Estelle, 445 U. S. 263, 267, n. 7 (1980); County Court of Ulster Cty. v. Allen, 442 U. S. 140, 153-154 (1979). Rather than prolong this litigation by a remand, we proceed to decide the case on the Teague grounds that the Court of Appeals used.
III
Florida employs a three-stage sentencing procedure. First, the jury weighs statutorily specified aggravating circumstances against any mitigating circumstances, and renders an "advisory sentence" of either life imprisonment or death. Fla. Stat. § 921.141(2) (Supp. 1992). Second, the trial court weighs the aggravating and mitigating circumstances, and enters a sentence of life imprisonment or death;
525
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