160
Opinion of the Court
this Court's precedent, "susceptible to debate among reasonable minds." Butler, 494 U. S., at 415; cf. Sawyer v. Smith, 497 U. S. 227, 236-237 (1990) (citing, as evidence that Caldwell v. Mississippi, 472 U. S. 320 (1985), announced a new rule, the views of the three Caldwell dissenters). An assessment of the legal landscape existing at the time petitioner's conviction and sentence became final bolsters this conclusion.
1
Petitioner's review of the relevant precedent discloses the decisions relied upon in Simmons, namely, Gardner v. Florida, supra, and Skipper v. South Carolina, supra. Petitioner asserts that a reasonable jurist considering his claim in light of those two decisions "would have felt 'compelled . . . to conclude that the rule [petitioner] seeks was required by the Constitution.' " Brief for Petitioner 14 (quoting Saffle, 494 U. S., at 488) (emphasis deleted).
In Gardner, the defendant received a death sentence from a judge who had reviewed a presentence report that was not made available to the defendant. Gardner produced no opinion for the Court. A plurality of the Court concluded that the defendant "was denied due process of law when the death sentence was imposed, at least in part, on the basis of information which he had no opportunity to deny or explain." 430 U. S., at 362. Justice White concurred in the judgment, providing the narrowest grounds of decision among the Justices whose votes were necessary to the judgment. Cf. Marks v. United States, 430 U. S. 188, 193 (1977). He concluded that the Eighth Amendment was violated by a "procedure for selecting people for the death penalty which permits consideration of such secret information relevant to the character and record of the individual offender." 430 U. S., at 364 (internal quotation marks omitted; emphasis added).
In Skipper, the prosecutor argued during the penalty phase that a death sentence was appropriate because the defendant "would pose disciplinary problems if sentenced to
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