152
Syllabus
scape existing at the time petitioner's conviction and sentence became final bolsters this conclusion. Contrary to petitioner's position, the result in Simmons did not follow ineluctably from the decisions in Gardner v. Florida, 430 U. S. 349, and Skipper v. South Carolina, 476 U. S. 1. The seven opinions in Gardner produced a narrow holding that a death penalty procedure permitting consideration of secret information relevant to the offender's character and record—there a presentence report not provided to the defendant—violates the Eighth Amendment. Petitioner points to no secret evidence in his case. And the evidence he sought to present to the jury was not historical evidence about his character and record but evidence concerning what might happen, under then-extant law, after a sentence was imposed. In Skipper, too, it was evidence of past behavior that the defendant was unconstitutionally prevented from adducing. The distinction between information concerning state postsentencing law and evidence specifically related to the defendant was also at the heart of two other cases in 1988's complex legal landscape. In California v. Ramos, 463 U. S. 992, the Court concluded that California had reasonably chosen to provide some, limited, postsentence information to the capital sentencing jury, namely, the possibility of pardon. But the Court emphasized that this conclusion did not override the choices of other States not to permit their juries to be informed of postsentencing proceedings, including parole. The general proposition that the States retained the prerogative to determine how much (if at all) juries would be informed about the postsentencing legal regime was given further credence in Caldwell v. Mississippi, 472 U. S. 320. The Court determined there that the prosecution and judge had improperly left the jury with the impression that a death sentence was not final because it would be extensively reviewed, with a plurality concluding that, Ramos notwithstanding, sentencing juries were never to be given information about postsentencing appellate proceedings, and Justice O’Connor concluding that such information—if accurate—could be provided. In light of these cases, it would hardly have been unreasonable for a jurist in 1988 to conclude that his State had acted constitutionally by choosing not to advise its jurors as to events that would (or would not) follow their death sentence recommendation. Accordingly, Simmons announced a new rule that may not be applied here unless it falls within a Teague exception. Pp. 157-166. (c) Simmons' narrow right of rebuttal is not a watershed rule of criminal procedure implicating the fundamental fairness and accuracy of the criminal proceeding under the second exception to Teague. Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U. S. 335, distinguished. P. 167.
95 F. 3d 1214, affirmed.
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