Cite as: 521 U. S. 151 (1997)
Opinion of the Court
in judgment), suggesting that the rule announced in Simmons was not inevitable. See also id., at 183 (Scalia, J., dissenting).
That distinction—between information concerning state postsentencing law on the one hand and evidence specifically related to the defendant on the other—was also at the heart of Ramos and Caldwell. In Ramos, the majority concluded that California had reasonably chosen to provide some, limited, postsentence information to the capital sentencing jury—though it noted that many other States had elected just the opposite. The principal dissent in Ramos would have forbidden the provision of any information about post-sentence occurrences for the very reason that it did not constitute evidence concerning the defendant's "character or the nature of his crime." 463 U. S., at 1022 (opinion of Marshall, J.). In Caldwell, the plurality and Justice O’Connor contested whether the fact that "appellate review is available to a capital defendant sentenced to death" was "simply a factor that in itself is wholly irrelevant to the determination of the appropriate sentence" (as the plurality concluded, 472 U. S., at 336), or whether provision of that information was a constitutional "policy choice in favor of jury education" (as Justice O’Connor concluded, id., at 342 (opinion concurring in part and concurring in judgment)).
A reasonable jurist in 1988, then, could have drawn a distinction between information about a defendant and information concerning the extant legal regime. It would hardly have been unreasonable in light of Ramos and Caldwell for the jurist 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 recommendation of a death sentence, as provided by the legal regime of the moment. Indeed, given the sentiments, expressed in Justice Marshall's Ramos dissent and Caldwell plurality, that information about postsentence procedures was never to go to the jury and given that the decision whether to provide such informa-
165
Page: Index Previous 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007