88
OCTOBER TERM, 1997
Syllabus
certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the eighth circuit
No. 96-1693. Argued February 23, 1998—Decided June 8, 1998
Respondent was indicted on two counts of felony murder under Nebraska law. The Nebraska first-degree murder statute defines felony murder as murder committed in the perpetration of certain enumerated felonies, including, as relevant here, sexual assault and attempt to commit sexual assault in the first degree. Under Nebraska law, intent to kill is conclusively presumed if the State proves intent to commit the underlying felony. A felony-murder conviction makes a defendant eligible for the death penalty, which in Nebraska is imposed judicially, not by the trial jury. The trial court refused respondent's request to instruct the jury on second-degree murder and manslaughter on the ground that the State Supreme Court consistently has held that these crimes are not lesser included offenses of felony murder. Respondent's jury then convicted him on both felony-murder counts, and a three-judge panel sentenced him to death. After exhausting his state remedies, respondent filed a federal habeas corpus petition, claiming, inter alia, that the trial court's failure to give the requested instructions was unconstitutional under Beck v. Alabama, 447 U. S. 625, in which this Court invalidated an Alabama law that prohibited lesser included offense instructions in capital cases, when lesser included offenses to the charged crime existed under state law and such instructions were generally given in noncapital cases. The District Court granted relief on an unrelated due process claim, which the Eighth Circuit rejected. However, the Eighth Circuit also held that, in failing to give the requested instructions, the trial court had committed the same constitutional error as that in Beck.
Held: Beck does not require state trial courts to instruct juries on offenses that are not lesser included offenses of the charged crime under state law. Pp. 94-101.
(a) Beck is distinguishable from this case in two critical respects: The Alabama statute prohibited instructions on offenses that state law clearly recognized as lesser included offenses of the charged crime, and it did so only in capital cases. Alabama thus erected an artificial barrier that restricted its juries to a choice between conviction for a capital offense and acquittal. By contrast, when the Nebraska trial court declined to give the requested instructions, it merely followed the State Supreme Court's 100-year-old rule that second-degree murder and man-
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