Cite as: 521 U. S. 151 (1997)
Stevens, J., dissenting
Gardner in his opinion for the Court in Skipper. Although his opinion accepted Skipper's argument that the exclusion of evidence of his good behavior in prison at the sentencing hearing violated the Eighth Amendment requirement that the jury be allowed to consider all relevant mitigating evidence, Justice White went out of his way to add a footnote endorsing the Gardner plurality's statement of the law and emphasizing that this "elemental due process requirement" provided an even more basic justification for the Court's holding.9 Moreover, in his opinion concurring in the judgment in Skipper, Justice Powell, joined by the Chief Justice and then-Justice Rehnquist, rejected the mitigating evidence rationale, relying instead on "the rule in Gardner." 476 U. S., at 10-11. Thus, in Skipper, all nine Justices then serving on the Court endorsed Gardner's holding that due process was violated when a sentencing determination rested on information that a defendant was not permitted to explain or deny. See also Clemons v. Mississippi, 494 U. S. 738, 746 (1990) (citing Gardner for the proposition that "[c]apital sentencing proceedings must of course satisfy the dictates of the Due Process Clause"); Simmons, 512 U. S., at 180 (Scalia, J., dissenting) (quoting Skipper and Gardner as "indicat[ing] that petitioner's due process rights would be violated if he was 'sentenced to death "on the basis of information which he had no opportunity to deny or explain," ' " but concluding that the petitioner could not show that his sentence violated this principle).
9 "Where the prosecution specifically relies on a prediction of future dangerousness in asking for the death penalty, it is not only the rule of Lockett [v. Ohio, 438 U. S. 586 (1978),] and Eddings [v. Oklahoma, 455 U. S. 104 (1982),] that requires that the defendant be afforded an opportunity to introduce evidence on this point; it is also the elemental due process requirement that a defendant not be sentenced to death 'on the basis of information which he had no opportunity to deny or explain.' Gardner v. Florida, 430 U. S. 349, 362 (1977)." Skipper v. South Carolina, 476 U. S. 1, 5, n. 1 (1986).
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