Cite as: 522 U. S. 269 (1998)
Scalia, J., concurring
weigh that evidence against petitioner's conduct in making a discretionary decision on the appropriate penalty. In this context, "there is not a reasonable likelihood that the jurors in petitioner's case understood the challenged instructions to preclude consideration of relevant mitigating evidence offered by petitioner." Boyde, supra, at 386; see also Johnson, 509 U. S., at 367.
The absence of an instruction on the concept of mitigation and of instructions on particular statutorily defined mitigating factors did not violate the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is
Affirmed.
Justice Scalia, concurring.
I agree that there is no "reasonable likelihood that the jurors in petitioner's case understood the challenged instructions to preclude consideration of relevant mitigating evidence," Boyde v. California, 494 U. S. 370, 386 (1990), so I join the opinion of the Court. I continue to adhere to my view that the Eighth Amendment does not, in any event, require that sentencing juries be given discretion to consider mitigating evidence. Petitioner's argument "that the jury at the selection phase must both have discretion to make an individualized determination and have that discretion limited and channeled," ante, at 275, perfectly describes the incompatibility between the Lockett-Eddings requirement and the holding of Furman v. Georgia, 408 U. S. 238 (1972) (per curiam), that the sentencer's discretion must be constrained to avoid arbitrary or freakish imposition of the death penalty. See Walton v. Arizona, 497 U. S. 639, 656 (1990) (Scalia, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment). The Court's ongoing attempt to resolve that contradiction by drawing an arbitrary line in the sand between the "eligibility and selection phases" of the sentencing decision is, in my view, incoherent and ultimately doomed to failure.
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