Cite as: 532 U. S. 36 (2001)
Thomas, J., dissenting
Carolina Supreme Court did not home in on the question whether the prosecutor's evidentiary submissions or closing argument in fact placed Shafer's future dangerousness at issue, we leave that question open for the state court's attention and disposition.
* * *
For the reasons stated, the judgment of the South Carolina Supreme Court is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Justice Scalia, dissenting.
While I concede that today's judgment is a logical extension of Simmons v. South Carolina, 512 U. S. 154 (1994), I am more attached to the logic of the Constitution, whose Due Process Clause was understood as an embodiment of common-law tradition, rather than as authority for federal courts to promulgate wise national rules of criminal procedure.
As I pointed out in Simmons, that common-law tradition does not contain special jury-instruction requirements for capital cases. Today's decision is the second page of the "whole new chapter" of our improvised " 'death-is-different' jurisprudence" that Simmons began. Id., at 185 (Scalia, J., dissenting). The third page (or the fourth or fifth) will be the (logical-enough) extension of this novel requirement to cases in which the jury did not inquire into the possibility of parole. Providing such information may well be a good idea (though it will sometimes harm rather than help the defendant's case)—and many States have indeed required it. See App. B to Brief for Petitioner. The Constitution, however, does not. I would limit Simmons to its facts.
Justice Thomas, dissenting.
For better or, as I believe, worse, the majority's decision in this case is the logical next step after Simmons v. South
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