Cite as: 521 U. S. 151 (1997)
Stevens, J., dissenting
exception should be limited to those "procedures without which the likelihood of an accurate [determination of guilt or innocence] is seriously diminished." Teague, 489 U. S., at 313.3
Since Teague was decided, this Court has never found a rule so essential to the fairness of a proceeding that it would fall under this exception.4 In my view, the right in Simmons—the right to respond to an inaccurate or misleading argument—is surely a bedrock procedural element of a full and fair hearing. As Justice O’Connor recognized in her opinion in Simmons, this right to rebut the prosecutor's arguments is a "hallmar[k] of due process," 512 U. S., at 175 (opinion concurring in judgment). See also id., at 174 (Ginsburg, J., concurring) ("This case is most readily resolved under a core requirement of due process, the right to be heard"). When a defendant is denied the ability to respond to the state's case against him, he is deprived of "his fundamental constitutional right to a fair opportunity to present a defense." Crane v. Kentucky, 476 U. S. 683, 687 (1986).
The Court today argues that Simmons defined only a "narrow right of rebuttal [for] defendants in a limited class of capital cases," ante, at 167, and therefore that the rule cannot be in that class of rules so essential to the accuracy of
3 Although Teague v. Lane, 489 U. S. 288 (1989), focused on the accuracy of a guilt-innocence determination, we have long recognized that sentencing procedures, as well as trials, must satisfy the dictates of the Due Process Clause, see, e. g., Clemons v. Mississippi, 494 U. S. 738, 746 (1990), and that the unique character of the death penalty mandates special scrutiny of those procedures in capital cases. An unfair procedure that seriously diminishes the likelihood of an accurate determination that a convicted defendant should receive the death penalty rather than life without parole—that the defendant is "innocent of the death penalty," see Sawyer v. Whitley, 505 U. S. 333, 341-343 (1992)—is plainly encompassed by Teague's exception.
4 The most commonly cited example of a rule so fundamental that it would fit this category is the right to counsel articulated in Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U. S. 335 (1963).
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