96
Opinion of the Court
106 Neb. 395, 184 N. W. 68 (1921); Morgan v. State, 51 Neb. 672, 695, 71 N. W. 788, 794-795 (1897). If a Nebraska trial court gives instructions on those offenses, and the defendant is convicted only of second-degree murder or manslaughter, that conviction must be reversed on appeal. See Thompson v. State, supra, at 396, 184 N. W., at 68. Thus, as a matter of law, Nebraska prosecutors cannot obtain convictions for second-degree murder or manslaughter in a felony-murder trial.
Beck is therefore 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. Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 20 (citing California v. Ramos, 463 U. S. 992, 1007 (1983)). Here, by contrast, the Nebraska trial court did not deny respondent instructions on any existing lesser included offense of felony murder; it merely declined to give instructions on crimes that are not lesser included offenses. In so doing, the trial court did not create an "artificial barrier" for the jury; nor did it treat capital cases differently from noncapital cases. Instead, it simply followed the Nebraska Supreme Court's interpretation of the relevant offenses under state law.
By ignoring these distinctions, the Court of Appeals limited state sovereignty in a manner more severe than the rule in Beck. Almost all States, including Nebraska, provide instructions only on those offenses that have been deemed to constitute lesser included offenses of the charged crime. See n. 5, supra.6 We have never suggested that the Consti-6 In determining whether an offense is a lesser included offense of a particular crime, the States have adopted a variety of approaches. See, e. g., State v. Berlin, 133 Wash. 2d 541, 550-551, 947 P. 2d 700, 704-705
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