William Rehnquist

“ The court believed that the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments required that the jury have the discretion to decide whether, under all of the relevant circumstances, a defendant deserves the punishment of death or life without parole, id., at 540, 230 Cal.Rptr., at 848, 726 P.2d, at 531, and stated that each case in which the mandatory language was used "must be examined on its own merits to determine whether, in context, the sentencer may have been misled to defendant's prejudice about the scope of its sentencing discretion under the 1978 law." ”

“ App. 33 (emphasis added) , and in our view reasonable jurors surely would not have felt constrained by the factor (k) instruction to ignore all of the evidence presented by petitioner during the sentencing phase. Presentation of mitigating evidence alone, of course, does not guarantee that a jury will feel entitled to consider that evidence. But the introduction without objection of volumes of mitigating evidence certainly is relevant to deciding how a jury would understand an instruction which is at worst ambiguous. ”

“ Although Blystone, unlike Boyde, did not present any mitigating evidence at the penalty phase of his capital trial, the legal principle we expounded in Blystone clearly requires rejection of Boyde's claim as well, because the mandatory language of CALJIC 8.84.2 is not alleged to have interfered with the consideration of mitigating evidence. Petitioner suggests that the jury must have freedom to decline to impose the death penalty even if the jury decides that the aggravating circumstances "outweigh" the mitigating circumstances. ”

“ This case requires us to decide whether two California jury instructions used in the penalty phase of petitioner's capital murder trial and in other California capital cases before each was modified in 1983 and 1985, respectively, are consistent with the requirements of the Eighth Amendment. We hold that they are. ”

“ But we agree with the Supreme Court of California, which was without dissent on this point, that " [a] lthough the prosecutor argued that in his view the evidence did not sufficiently mitigate Boyde's conduct, he never suggested that the background and character evidence could not be considered." ”

“ During the course of twenty-four years, even on a basis of just random luck, you are going to have to have picked up something or done something . . . we can all approve of, but if you consider that on the weight that goes against it, . ”