Kansas v. Marsh

(Slip Opinion) OCTOBER TERM, 2005 1

Syllabus

NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is
being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued.
The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been
prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader.
See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

Syllabus

KANSAS v. MARSH

CERTIORARI TO THE SUPREME COURT OF KANSAS

No. 04–1170. Argued December 7, 2005—Reargued April 25, 2006—
Decided June 26, 2006
Finding three aggravating circumstances that were not outweighed by
mitigating circumstances, a Kansas jury convicted respondent Marsh
of, inter alia, capital murder and sentenced him to death. Marsh
claimed on direct appeal that Kan. Stat. Ann. §21–4624(e) establishes
an unconstitutional presumption in favor of death by directing impo
sition of the death penalty when aggravating and mitigating circum
stances are in equipoise. Agreeing, the Kansas Supreme Court con
cluded that §21–4624(e)’s weighing equation violated the Eighth and
Fourteenth Amendments and remanded for a new trial.
Held:
1. This Court has jurisdiction to review the Kansas Supreme
Court’s judgment under 28 U. S. C. §1257. That provision authorizes
review of a State’s final judgment when a state statute’s validity is
questioned on federal constitutional grounds, and it permits review
even when the state-court proceedings are not complete where the
federal claim has been finally decided and later review of the federal
issue cannot be had, whatever the case’s outcome, Cox Broadcasting
Corp. v. Cohn, 420 U. S. 469, 481. Although Marsh will be retried,
the State Supreme Court’s determination that the death penalty
statute is unconstitutional is final and binding on the lower state
courts. Thus, the State will be unable to obtain further review of its
law in this case. This Court has deemed lower court decisions final
for §1257 purposes in like circumstances, see, e.g., Florida v. Meyers,
466 U. S. 380 (per curiam). Pp. 3–4.
2. The State Supreme Court’s judgment is not supported by ade
quate and independent state grounds. Marsh maintains that the
judgment was based on state law, the State Supreme Court having
previously reviewed the statute in State v. Kleypas. However, Kley
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Syllabus

pas itself rested on federal law. In this case, the State Supreme
Court chastised the Kleypas court for avoiding the constitutional is
sue, squarely found §21–4624(e) unconstitutional on its face, and
overruled Kleypas in relevant part. Pp. 4–5.
3. Kansas’ capital sentencing statute is constitutional. Pp. 5–19.
(a) Walton v. Arizona, 497 U. S. 639, requires approval of the
Kansas statute. There, the Court held that a state death penalty
statute may give the defendant the burden to prove that mitigating
circumstances outweigh aggravating circumstances. A fortiori, Kan
sas’ death penalty statute, consistent with the Constitution, may di
rect imposition of the death penalty when the State has proved be
yond a reasonable doubt that mitigators do not outweigh aggravators,
including where the two are in equipoise. Pp. 5–9.
(b) Even if, as Marsh contends, Walton does not directly control
here, general principles in this Court’s death penalty jurisprudence
lead to the same conclusion. So long as a state system satisfies the
requirements of Furman v. Georgia, 408 U. S. 238, and Gregg v.
Georgia, 428 U. S. 153—that a system must rationally narrow the
class of death-eligible defendants and must permit a jury to render a
reasonable, individualized sentencing determination—a State has a
range of discretion in imposing the death penalty, including the
manner in which aggravating and mitigating circumstances are
weighed. The use of mitigation evidence is a product of the individ
ual-sentencing requirement. Defendants have the right to present
sentencers with information relevant to the sentencing decision and
sentencers are obliged to consider that information in determining
the appropriate sentence. The thrust of this Court’s mitigation juris
prudence ends here, for the Court has never held that the Constitu
tion requires a specific method for balancing aggravating and miti
gating factors. Pp. 9–11.
(c) Kansas’ death penalty statute satisfies the constitutional
mandates of Furman and its progeny because it rationally narrows
the class of death-eligible defendants and permits a jury to consider
any mitigating evidence relevant to its sentencing determination.
The State’s weighing equation merely channels a jury’s discretion by
providing criteria by which the jury may determine whether life or
death is appropriate. Its system provides the kind of guided discre
tion sanctioned in, e.g., Walton, supra. Contrary to Marsh’s argu
ment, §21–4624(e) does not create a general presumption in favor of
the death penalty. A life sentence must be imposed if the State fails
to demonstrate the existence of an aggravating circumstance beyond
a reasonable doubt, if the State cannot prove beyond a reasonable
doubt that aggravating circumstances are not outweighed by mitigat
ing circumstances, or if the jury is unable to reach a unanimous deci
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Syllabus

sion in any respect. Marsh’s contentions that an equipoise determi
nation reflects juror confusion or inability to decide between life and
death or that the jury may use equipoise as a loophole to shirk its
constitutional duty to render a reasoned, moral sentencing decision
rest on an implausible characterization of the Kansas statute—that a
jury’s determination that aggravators and mitigators are in equipoise
is not a decision, much less a decision for death. Weighing is not an
end, but a means to reaching a decision. Kansas’ instructions clearly
inform the jury that a determination that the evidence is in equipoise
is a decision for death. Pp. 11–16.
278 Kan. 520, 102 P. 3d 445, reversed and remanded.

THOMAS, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which ROBERTS,
C. J., and SCALIA, KENNEDY, and ALITO, JJ., joined. SCALIA, J., filed a
concurring opinion. STEVENS, J., filed a dissenting opinion. SOUTER, J.,
filed a dissenting opinion, in which STEVENS, GINSBURG, and BREYER,
JJ., joined.
 Cite as: 548 U. S. ____ (2006) 1

Opinion of the Court

NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the
preliminary print of the United States Reports. Readers are requested to
notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Wash
ington, D. C. 20543, of any typographical or other formal errors, in order
that corrections may be made before the preliminary print goes to press.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
_________________

No. 04–1170
_________________

KANSAS, PETITIONER v. MICHAEL LEE MARSH, II
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE SUPREME COURT OF KANSAS
[June 26, 2006]

JUSTICE THOMAS delivered the opinion of the Court.
Kansas law provides that if a unanimous jury finds that
aggravating circumstances are not outweighed by mitigat
ing circumstances, the death penalty shall be imposed.
Kan. Stat. Ann. §21–4624(e) (1995). We must decide
whether this statute, which requires the imposition of the
death penalty when the sentencing jury determines that
aggravating evidence and mitigating evidence are in
equipoise, violates the Constitution. We hold that it does
not.
I
Respondent Michael Lee Marsh II broke into the home
of Marry Ane Pusch and lay in wait for her to return.
When Marry Ane entered her home with her 19-month-old
daughter, M. P., Marsh repeatedly shot Marry Ane,
stabbed her, and slashed her throat. The home was set on
fire with the toddler inside, and M. P. burned to death.
The jury convicted Marsh of the capital murder of M. P.,
the first-degree premeditated murder of Marry Ane, ag
gravated arson, and aggravated burglary. The jury found
beyond a reasonable doubt the existence of three aggravat
ing circumstances, and that those circumstances were not
outweighed by any mitigating circumstances. On the
2 KANSAS v. MARSH

Opinion of the Court

basis of those findings, the jury sentenced Marsh to death
for the capital murder of M. P. The jury also sentenced
Marsh to life imprisonment without possibility of parole
for 40 years for the first-degree murder of Marry Ane, and
consecutive sentences of 51 months’ imprisonment for
aggravated arson and 34 months’ imprisonment for aggra
vated burglary.
On direct appeal, Marsh challenged §21–4624(e), which
reads:
“If, by unanimous vote, the jury finds beyond a rea
sonable doubt that one or more of the aggravating cir
cumstances enumerated in K. S. A. 21–4625 . . . exist
and, further, that the existence of such aggravating
circumstances is not outweighed by any mitigating
circumstances which are found to exist, the defendant
shall be sentenced to death; otherwise the defendant
shall be sentenced as provided by law.”
Focusing on the phrase “shall be sentenced to death,”
Marsh argued that §21–4624(e) establishes an unconstitu
tional presumption in favor of death because it directs
imposition of the death penalty when aggravating and
mitigating circumstances are in equipoise.
The Kansas Supreme Court agreed, and held that the
Kansas death penalty statute, §21–4624(e), is facially
unconstitutional. 278 Kan. 520, 534–535, 102 P. 3d 445,
458 (2004). The court concluded that the statute’s weigh
ing equation violated the Eighth and Fourteenth Amend
ments of the United States Constitution because, “[i]n the
event of equipoise, i.e., the jury’s determination that the
balance of any aggravating circumstances and any miti
gating circumstances weighed equal, the death penalty
would be required.” Id., at 534, 102 P. 3d, at 457. The
Kansas Supreme Court affirmed Marsh’s conviction and
sentence for aggravated burglary and premeditated mur
der of Marry Ane, and reversed and remanded for new
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Opinion of the Court

trial Marsh’s convictions for capital murder of M. P. and
aggravated arson.1 We granted certiorari, 544 U. S. 1060
(2005), and now reverse the Kansas Supreme Court’s
judgment that Kansas’ capital sentencing statute, Kan.
Stat. Ann. §21–4624(e), is facially unconstitutional.
II
In addition to granting certiorari to review the constitu
tionality of Kansas’ capital sentencing statute, we also
directed the parties to brief and argue: (1) whether we
have jurisdiction to review the judgment of the Kansas
Supreme Court under 28 U. S. C. §1257, as construed by
Cox Broadcasting Corp. v. Cohn, 420 U. S. 469 (1975); and
(2) whether the Kansas Supreme Court’s judgment is
supported by adequate state grounds independent of
federal law. 544 U. S. 1060. Having considered the par
ties’ arguments, we conclude that we have jurisdiction in
this case and that the constitutional issue is properly
before the Court.
A
Title 28 U. S. C. §1257 authorizes this Court to review,
by writ of certiorari, the final judgment of the highest
court of a State when the validity of a state statute is
questioned on federal constitutional grounds. This Court
has determined that the foregoing authorization permits
review of the judgment of the highest court of a State,
even though the state-court proceedings are not yet com
plete, “where the federal claim has been finally decided,
with further proceedings on the merits in the state courts
to come, but in which later review of the federal issue
——————
1 The Kansas Supreme Court found that the trial court committed

reversible error by excluding circumstantial evidence of third-party
guilt connecting Eric Pusch, Marry Ane’s husband, to the crimes, and,
accordingly ordered a new trial on this ground. 278 Kan., at 528–533,
102 P. 3d, at 454–457.
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Opinion of the Court

cannot be had, whatever the ultimate outcome of the
case.” Cox Broadcasting, supra, at 481.
Here, although Marsh will be retried on the capital
murder and aggravated arson charges, the Kansas Su
preme Court’s determination that Kansas’ death penalty
statute is facially unconstitutional is final and binding on
the lower state courts. Thus, the State will be unable to
obtain further review of its death penalty law later in this
case. If Marsh is acquitted of capital murder, double
jeopardy and state law will preclude the State from ap
pealing. If he is reconvicted, the State will be prohibited
under the Kansas Supreme Court’s decision from seeking
the death penalty, and there would be no opportunity for
the State to seek further review of that prohibition. Al
though Marsh argues that a provision of the Kansas
criminal appeals statute, Kan. Stat. Ann. §22–3602(b)
(2003 Cum. Supp.), would permit the State to appeal the
invalidation of Kansas’ death penalty statute, that conten
tion is meritless. That statute provides for limited appeal
in only four enumerated circumstances, none of which
apply here. We have deemed lower court decisions final
for 28 U. S. C. §1257 purposes in like circumstances, see
Florida v. Meyers, 466 U. S. 380 (1984) (per curiam); South
Dakota v. Neville, 459 U. S. 553 (1983); New York v.
Quarles, 467 U. S. 649 (1984), and do so again here.
B
Nor is the Kansas Supreme Court’s decision supported
by adequate and independent state grounds. Marsh main
tains that the Kansas Supreme Court’s decision was based
on the severability of §21–4624(e) under state law, and not
the constitutionality of that provision under federal law,
the latter issue having been resolved by the Kansas Su
preme Court in State v. Kleypas, 272 Kan. 894, 40 P. 3d
139 (2001). Marsh’s argument fails.
Kleypas, itself, rested on federal law. See id., at 899–
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Opinion of the Court

903, 40 P. 3d, at 166–167. In rendering its determination
here, the Kansas Supreme Court observed that Kleypas,
“held that the weighing equation in K. S. A. 21–4624(e) as
written was unconstitutional under the Eighth and Four
teenth Amendments” as applied to cases in which aggra
vating evidence and mitigating evidence are equally bal
anced. 278 Kan., at 534, 102 P. 3d, at 457. In this case,
the Kansas Supreme Court chastised the Kleypas court for
avoiding the constitutional issue of the statute’s facial
validity, squarely held that §21–4624(e) is unconstitu
tional on its face, and overruled the portion of Kleypas
upholding the statute through the constitutional avoid
ance doctrine and judicial revision. 278 Kan., at 534–535,
539–542, 102 P. 3d, at 458, 462. As in Kleypas, the Kan
sas Supreme Court clearly rested its decision here on the
Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States
Constitution. We, therefore, have jurisdiction to review its
decision. See Michigan v. Long, 463 U. S. 1032, 1040–
1041 (1983).
III
This case is controlled by Walton v. Arizona, 497 U. S.
639 (1990), overruled on other grounds, Ring v. Arizona,
536 U. S. 584 (2002). In that case, a jury had convicted
Walton of a capital offense. At sentencing, the trial judge
found the existence of two aggravating circumstances and
that the mitigating circumstances did not call for leniency,
and sentenced Walton to death. 497 U. S., at 645. The
Arizona Supreme Court affirmed, and this Court granted
certiorari to resolve the conflict between the Arizona
Supreme Court’s decision in State v. Walton, 159 Ariz.
571, 769 P. 2d 1017 (1989) (en banc) (holding the Arizona
death penalty statute constitutional), and the Ninth Cir
cuit’s decision in Adamson v. Ricketts, 865 F. 2d 1011,
1043–1044 (1988) (en banc) (finding the Arizona death
penalty statute unconstitutional because, “in situations
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Opinion of the Court

where the mitigating and aggravating circumstances are
in balance, or, where the mitigating circumstances give
the court reservation but still fall below the weight of the
aggravating circumstances, the statute bars the court
from imposing a sentence less than death”). See Walton,
497 U. S., at 647.
Consistent with the Ninth Circuit’s conclusion in
Adamson, Walton argued to this Court that the Arizona
capital sentencing system created an unconstitutional
presumption in favor of death because it “tells an Arizona
sentencing judge who finds even a single aggravating
factor, that death must be imposed, unless—as the Ari
zona Supreme Court put it in Petitioner’s case—there are
‘outweighing mitigating factors.’ ” Brief for Petitioner in
Walton v. Arizona, O. T. 1989, No. 88–7351, p. 33; see also
id., at 34 (arguing that the statute is unconstitutional
because the defendant “ ‘must . . . bear the risk of nonper
suasion that any mitigating circumstance will not out
weigh the aggravating circumstance’ ” (alteration omit
ted)). Rejecting Walton’s argument, see 497 U. S., at 650,
651, this Court stated:
“So long as a State’s method of allocating the burdens
of proof does not lessen the State’s burden to prove
every element of the offense charged, or in this case to
prove the existence of aggravating circumstances, a
defendant’s constitutional rights are not violated by
placing on him the burden of proving mitigating cir
cumstances sufficiently substantial to call for leni
ency.” Id., at 650.
This Court noted that, as a requirement of individualized
sentencing, a jury must have the opportunity to consider
all evidence relevant to mitigation, and that a state stat
ute that permits a jury to consider any mitigating evi
dence comports with that requirement. Id., at 652 (citing
Blystone v. Pennsylvania, 494 U. S. 299, 307 (1990)). The
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Opinion of the Court

Court also pointedly observed that while the Constitution
requires that a sentencing jury have discretion, it does not
mandate that discretion be unfettered; the States are free
to determine the manner in which a jury may consider
mitigating evidence. 497 U. S., at 652 (citing Boyde v.
California, 494 U. S. 370, 374 (1990)). So long as the
sentencer is not precluded from considering relevant
mitigating evidence, a capital sentencing statute cannot be
said to impermissibly, much less automatically, impose
death. 497 U. S., at 652 (citing Woodson v. North Caro
lina, 428 U. S. 280 (1976) (plurality opinion), and Roberts
v. Louisiana, 428 U. S. 325 (1976) (plurality opinion)).
Indeed, Walton suggested that the only capital sentencing
systems that would be impermissibly mandatory were
those that would “automatically impose death upon con
viction for certain types of murder.” 497 U. S., at 652.
Contrary to Marsh’s contentions and the Kansas Su
preme Court’s conclusions, see 278 Kan., at 536–538, 102
P. 3d, at 459, the question presented in the instant case
was squarely before this Court in Walton. Though, as
Marsh notes, the Walton Court did not employ the term
“equipoise,” that issue undeniably gave rise to the ques
tion this Court sought to resolve, and it was necessarily
included in Walton’s argument that the Arizona system
was unconstitutional because it required the death pen
alty unless the mitigating circumstances outweighed the
aggravating circumstances. See supra, at 5. Moreover,
the dissent in Walton reinforces what is evident from the
opinion and the judgment of the Court—that the equipoise
issue was before the Court, and that the Court resolved
the issue in favor of the State. Indeed, the “equipoise”
issue was, in large measure, the basis of the Walton dis
sent. See 497 U. S., at 687–688 (opinion of Blackmun, J.)
(“If the mitigating and aggravating circumstances are in
equipoise, the [Arizona] statute requires that the trial
judge impose capital punishment. The assertion that a
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Opinion of the Court

sentence of death may be imposed in such a case runs
directly counter to the Eighth Amendment requirement
that a capital sentence must rest upon a ‘determination
that death is the appropriate punishment in a specific
case’ ”). Thus, although Walton did not discuss the equi
poise issue explicitly, that issue was resolved by its
holding. Cf. post, at 2 (STEVENS, J., dissenting); cf. also
post, at 2, n. 1 (SOUTER, J., dissenting).
Our conclusion that Walton controls here is reinforced
by the fact that the Arizona and Kansas statutes are
comparable in important respects. Similar to the express
language of the Kansas statute, the Arizona statute at
issue in Walton has been consistently construed to mean
that the death penalty will be imposed upon a finding that
aggravating circumstances are not outweighed by mitigat
ing circumstances.2 See State v. Ysea, 191 Ariz. 372, 375,
956 P. 2d 499, 502 (1998) (en banc); State v. Gretzler, 135
Ariz. 42, 55, 659 P. 2d 1, 14 (1983) (in banc); Adamson,
865 F. 2d, at 1041–1043. Like the Kansas statute, the
Arizona statute places the burden of proving the existence
of aggravating circumstances on the State, and both stat
utes require the defendant to proffer mitigating evidence.
The statutes are distinct in one respect. The Arizona
statute, once the State has met its burden, tasks the de
fendant with the burden of proving sufficient mitigating
circumstances to overcome the aggravating circumstances
and that a sentence less than death is therefore war
ranted. In contrast, the Kansas statute requires the State
——————
2 Ariz.
Rev. Stat. Ann. §13–703(E) (Supp. 2005) provides:
“In determining whether to impose a sentence of death or life impris
onment, the trier of fact shall take into account the aggravating and
mitigating circumstances that have been proven. The trier of fact shall
impose a sentence of death if the trier of fact finds one or more of the
aggravating circumstances enumerated in subsection F of this section
and then determines that there are no mitigating circumstances
sufficiently substantial to call for leniency.”
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Opinion of the Court

to bear the burden of proving to the jury, beyond a reason
able doubt, that aggravators are not outweighed by miti
gators and that a sentence of death is therefore appropri
ate; it places no additional evidentiary burden on the
capital defendant. This distinction operates in favor of
Kansas capital defendants. Otherwise the statutes func
tion in substantially the same manner and are sufficiently
analogous for our purposes. Thus, Walton is not distin
guishable from the instant case.
Accordingly, the reasoning of Walton requires approval
of the Kansas death penalty statute. At bottom, in
Walton, the Court held that a state death penalty statute
may place the burden on the defendant to prove that
mitigating circumstances outweigh aggravating circum
stances. A fortiori, Kansas’ death penalty statute, consis
tent with the Constitution, may direct imposition of the
death penalty when the State has proved beyond a rea
sonable doubt that mitigators do not outweigh aggrava
tors, including where the aggravating circumstances and
mitigating circumstances are in equipoise.
IV

A

Even if, as Marsh contends, Walton does not directly
control, the general principles set forth in our death pen
alty jurisprudence would lead us to conclude that the
Kansas capital sentencing system is constitutionally
permissible. Together, our decisions in Furman v. Geor
gia, 408 U. S. 238 (1972) (per curiam), and Gregg v. Geor
gia, 428 U. S. 153 (1976) (joint opinion of Stewart, Powell,
and STEVENS, JJ.), establish that a state capital sentenc
ing system must: (1) rationally narrow the class of death-
eligible defendants; and (2) permit a jury to render a
reasoned, individualized sentencing determination based
on a death-eligible defendant’s record, personal character
istics, and the circumstances of his crime. See id., at 189.
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Opinion of the Court

So long as a state system satisfies these requirements, our
precedents establish that a State enjoys a range of discre
tion in imposing the death penalty, including the manner
in which aggravating and mitigating circumstances are to
be weighed. See Franklin v. Lynaugh, 487 U. S. 164, 179
(1988) (plurality opinion) (citing Zant v. Stephens, 462
U. S. 862, 875–876, n. 13 (1983)).
The use of mitigation evidence is a product of the re
quirement of individualized sentencing. See Graham v.
Collins, 506 U. S. 461, 484–489 (1993) (THOMAS, J., concur
ring) (discussing the development of mitigation precedent).
In Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U. S. 586, 604 (1978), a plurality of
this Court held that “the Eighth and Fourteenth Amend
ments require that the sentencer . . . not be precluded from
considering, as a mitigating factor, any aspect of a defen
dant’s character or record and any of the circumstances of
the offense that the defendant proffers as a basis for a sen
tence less than death.” (Emphasis in original.) The Court
has held that the sentencer must have full access to this
“‘highly relevant’” information. Id., at 603 (alteration omit
ted) (quoting Williams v. New York, 337 U. S. 241, 247
(1949)). Thus, in Lockett, the Court struck down the Ohio
death penalty statute as unconstitutional because, by limit
ing a jury’s consideration of mitigation to three factors
specified in the statute, it prevented sentencers in capital
cases from giving independent weight to mitigating evidence
militating in favor of a sentence other than death. 438
U. S., at 604–605. Following Lockett, in Eddings v. Okla
homa, 455 U. S. 104 (1982), a majority of the Court held
that a sentencer may not categorically refuse to consider
any relevant mitigating evidence. Id., at 114; see also Skip
per v. South Carolina, 476 U. S. 1, 3–4 (1986) (discussing
Eddings).
In aggregate, our precedents confer upon defendants the
right to present sentencers with information relevant to
the sentencing decision and oblige sentencers to consider
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Opinion of the Court

that information in determining the appropriate sentence.
The thrust of our mitigation jurisprudence ends here.
“[W]e have never held that a specific method for balancing
mitigating and aggravating factors in a capital sentencing
proceeding is constitutionally required.” Franklin, supra,
at 179 (citing Zant, supra, at 875–876, n. 13). Rather, this
Court has held that the States enjoy “ ‘a constitutionally
permissible range of discretion in imposing the death
penalty.’ ” Blystone, 494 U. S., at 308 (quoting McCleskey
v. Kemp, 481 U. S. 279, 305–306 (1987)). See also 494
U. S., at 307 (stating that “[t]he requirement of individual
ized sentencing in capital cases is satisfied by allowing the
jury to consider all relevant mitigating evidence”); Gra
ham, supra, at 490 (THOMAS, J., concurring) (stating that
“[o]ur early mitigating cases may thus be read as doing
little more than safeguarding the adversary process in
sentencing proceedings by conferring on the defendant an
affirmative right to place his relevant evidence before the
sentencer”).
B
The Kansas death penalty statute satisfies the constitu
tional mandates of Furman and its progeny because it
rationally narrows the class of death-eligible defendants
and permits a jury to consider any mitigating evidence
relevant to its sentencing determination. It does not
interfere, in a constitutionally significant way, with a
jury’s ability to give independent weight to evidence of
fered in mitigation.
Kansas’ procedure narrows the universe of death-
eligible defendants consistent with Eighth Amendment
requirements. Under Kansas law, imposition of the death
penalty is an option only after a defendant is convicted of
capital murder, which requires that one or more specific
elements beyond intentional premeditated murder be
found. See Kan. Stat. Ann. §21–3439. Once convicted of
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capital murder, a defendant becomes eligible for the death
penalty only if the State seeks a separate sentencing
hearing, §§21–4706(c) (2003 Cum. Supp.), 21–4624(a);
App. 23 (Instruction No. 2), and proves beyond a reason
able doubt the existence of one or more statutorily enu
merated aggravating circumstances. Kan. Stat. Ann.
§§21–4624(c), (e), and 21–4625; App. 24 (Instruction No.
3).
Consonant with the individualized sentencing require
ment, a Kansas jury is permitted to consider any evidence
relating to any mitigating circumstance in determining
the appropriate sentence for a capital defendant, so long
as that evidence is relevant. §21–4624(c). Specifically,
jurors are instructed:
“A mitigating circumstance is that which in fairness
or mercy may be considered as extenuating or reduc
ing the degree of moral culpability or blame or which
justify a sentence of less than death, although it does
not justify or excuse the offense. The determination of
what are mitigating circumstances is for you as jurors
to resolve under the facts and circumstances of this
case.
“The appropriateness of the exercise of mercy can
itself be a mitigating factor you may consider in de
termining whether the State has proved beyond a rea
sonable doubt that the death penalty is warranted.”
Id., at 24 (Instruction No. 4).3
Jurors are then apprised of, but not limited to, the factors
that the defendant contends are mitigating. Id., at 25–26.
They are then instructed that “[e]ach juror must consider
every mitigating factor that he or she individually finds to
——————
3 The “mercy” jury instruction alone forecloses the possibility of
Furman-type error as it “eliminate[s] the risk that a death sentence
will be imposed in spite of facts calling for a lesser penalty.” Post, at 4
(SOUTER, J., dissenting).
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exist.” Id., at 26.
Kansas’ weighing equation, ibid. (Instruction No. 5),
merely channels a jury’s discretion by providing it with
criteria by which it may determine whether a sentence of
life or death is appropriate. The system in Kansas pro
vides the type of “ ‘guided discretion,’ ” Walton, 497 U. S.,
at 659 (citing Gregg, 428 U. S., at 189), we have sanc
tioned in Walton, Boyde, and Blystone.
Indeed, in Boyde, this Court sanctioned a weighing jury
instruction that is analytically indistinguishable from the
Kansas jury instruction under review today. The Boyde
jury instruction read:
“ ‘If you conclude that the aggravating circumstances
outweigh the mitigating circumstances, you shall im
pose a sentence of death. However, if you determine
that the mitigating circumstances outweigh the ag
gravating circumstances, you shall impose a sentence
of confinement in the state prison for life without the
possibility of parole.’ ” 494 U. S., at 374 (emphasis in
original).
Boyde argued that the mandatory language of the instruc
tion prevented the jury from rendering an individualized
sentencing determination. This Court rejected that argu
ment, concluding that it was foreclosed by Blystone, where
the Court rejected a nearly identical challenge to the
Pennsylvania death penalty statute. 494 U. S., at 307.4
In so holding, this Court noted that the mandatory lan
guage of the statute did not prevent the jury from consid
ering all relevant mitigating evidence. Boyde, 494 U. S.,
at 374. Similarly here, §21–4624(e) does not prevent a
——————
4 In Blystone, the Pennsylvania statute authorized imposition of a

death sentence if the jury concluded “that the aggravating circum
stances outweigh[ed] the mitigating circumstances present in the
particular crime committed by the particular defendant, or that there
[were] no such mitigating circumstances.” 494 U. S., at 305.
14 KANSAS v. MARSH

Opinion of the Court

Kansas jury from considering mitigating evidence.
Marsh’s argument that the Kansas provision is impermis
sibly mandatory is likewise foreclosed.5
Contrary to Marsh’s argument, §21–4624(e) does not
create a general presumption in favor of the death penalty
in the State of Kansas. Rather, the Kansas capital sen
tencing system is dominated by the presumption that life
imprisonment is the appropriate sentence for a capital
conviction. If the State fails to meet its burden to demon
strate the existence of an aggravating circumstance(s)
beyond a reasonable doubt, a sentence of life imprison
ment must be imposed. §21–4624(e); App. 27 (Instruction
No. 10). If the State overcomes this hurdle, then it bears
the additional burden of proving beyond a reasonable
doubt that aggravating circumstances are not outweighed
by mitigating circumstances. Ibid. (Instruction No. 10);
id., at 26 (Instruction No. 5). Significantly, although the
defendant appropriately bears the burden of proffering
mitigating circumstances—a burden of production—he
never bears the burden of demonstrating that mitigating
circumstances outweigh aggravating circumstances.
——————
5 Contrary to JUSTICE SOUTER’s assertion, the Court’s decisions in

Boyde and Blystone did not turn on the “predominance of the aggrava
tors” in those cases. Post, at 3 (dissenting opinion.). Rather, those
decisions plainly turned on the fact that the mandatory language of the
respective statutes did not prevent the sentencing jury from “con
sider[ing] and giv[ing] effect to all relevant mitigating evidence.”
Blystone, supra, at 305. See also Boyde, 494 U. S., at 377 (“[T]he legal
principle we expounded in Blystone clearly requires rejection of Boyde’s
claim as well, because the mandatory language of [California jury
instruction] 8.84.2 is not alleged to have interfered with the considera
tion of mitigating evidence”). The language of the Kansas statute at
issue here no more “dictate[s] death,” post, at 3, than the mandatory
language at issue in Boyde and Blystone. See Blystone, supra, at 305
(explaining that the Pennsylvania statute is not “ ‘mandatory’ as that
term was understood in Woodson [v. North Carolina, 428 U. S. 280
(1976)] or Roberts [v. Louisiana, 428 U. S. 325 (1976)]” because “[d]eath is
not automatically imposed upon conviction for certain types of murder”).
 Cite as: 548 U. S. ____ (2006) 15

Opinion of the Court

Instead, the State always has the burden of demonstrating
that mitigating evidence does not outweigh aggravating
evidence. Absent the State’s ability to meet that burden,
the default is life imprisonment. Moreover, if the jury is
unable to reach a unanimous decision—in any respect—a
sentence of life must be imposed. §21–4624(c); App. 28
(Instruction No. 12). This system does not create a pre
sumption that death is the appropriate sentence for capi
tal murder.6
Nor is there any force behind Marsh’s contention that
an equipoise determination reflects juror confusion or
inability to decide between life and death, or that a jury
may use equipoise as a loophole to shirk its constitutional
duty to render a reasoned, moral decision, see California
v. Brown, 479 U. S. 538, 545 (1987) (O’Connor, J., concur
ring), regarding whether death is an appropriate sentence
for a particular defendant. Such an argument rests on an
implausible characterization of the Kansas statute—that a
jury’s determination that aggravators and mitigators are
in equipoise is not a decision, much less a decision for
death—and thus misses the mark. Cf. post, at 4–5
(SOUTER, J., dissenting) (arguing that Kansas’ weighing
equation undermines individualized sentencing). Weigh
ing is not an end; it is merely a means to reaching a deci
sion. The decision the jury must reach is whether life or
death is the appropriate punishment. The Kansas jury
instructions clearly inform the jury that a determination
that the evidence is in equipoise is a decision for—not a
——————
6 Additionally, Marsh’s argument turns on reading §21–4624(e) in
isolation. Such a reading, however, is contrary to “ ‘the well-established
proposition that a single instruction to a jury may not be judged in
artificial isolation, but must be viewed in the context of the overall
charge.’ ” Boyde v. California, 494 U. S. 370, 378 (1990) (citing Boyd v.
United States, 271 U. S. 104, 107 (1926)). The constitutionality of a
State’s death penalty system turns on review of that system in context.
We thus reject his disengaged interpretation of §21–4624(e).
16 KANSAS v. MARSH

Opinion of the Court

presumption in favor of—death. Kansas jurors, presumed
to follow their instructions, are made aware that: a deter
mination that mitigators outweigh aggravators is a deci
sion that a life sentence is appropriate; a determination
that aggravators outweigh mitigators or a determination
that mitigators do not outweigh aggravators—including a
finding that aggravators and mitigators are in balance—is
a decision that death is the appropriate sentence; and an
inability to reach a unanimous decision will result in a
sentence of life imprisonment. So informed, far from the
abdication of duty or the inability to select an appropriate
sentence depicted by Marsh and JUSTICE SOUTER, a jury’s
conclusion that aggravating evidence and mitigating
evidence are in equipoise is a decision for death and is
indicative of the type of measured, normative process in
which a jury is constitutionally tasked to engage when
deciding the appropriate sentence for a capital defendant.
V
JUSTICE SOUTER argues (hereinafter the dissent) that
the advent of DNA testing has resulted in the “exonera
tio[n]” of “innocent” persons “in numbers never imagined
before the development of DNA tests.” Post, at 5–6.
Based upon this “new empirical demonstration of how
‘death is different,’ ” post, at 8, the dissent concludes that
Kansas’ sentencing system permits the imposition of the
death penalty in the absence of reasoned moral judgment.
But the availability of DNA testing, and the questions it
might raise about the accuracy of guilt-phase determina
tions in capital cases, is simply irrelevant to the question
before the Court today, namely, the constitutionality of
Kansas’ capital sentencing system. Accordingly, the accu
racy of the dissent’s factual claim that DNA testing has
established the “innocence” of numerous convicted persons
under death sentences—and the incendiary debate it
 Cite as: 548 U. S. ____ (2006) 17

Opinion of the Court

invokes—is beyond the scope of this opinion.7
The dissent’s general criticisms against the death pen
alty are ultimately a call for resolving all legal disputes in
capital cases by adopting the outcome that makes the
death penalty more difficult to impose. While such a
bright-line rule may be easily applied, it has no basis in
law. Indeed, the logical consequence of the dissent’s ar
gument is that the death penalty can only be just in a
system that does not permit error. Because the criminal
justice system does not operate perfectly, abolition of the
death penalty is the only answer to the moral dilemma the
dissent poses. This Court, however, does not sit as a
moral authority. Our precedents do not prohibit the
States from authorizing the death penalty, even in our
imperfect system. And those precedents do not empower
this Court to chip away at the States’ prerogatives to do so
on the grounds the dissent invokes today.
* * *
We hold that the Kansas capital sentencing system,
which directs imposition of the death penalty when a jury
finds that aggravating and mitigating circumstances are
——————
7 But see The Penalty of Death, in Debating the Death Penalty:

Should America Have Capital Punishment? The Experts on Both Sides
Make Their Best Case, 117, 127–132, 134, (H. Bedau & P. Cassell eds.
2004). See also Comment, Protecting the Innocent: A Response to the
Bedau-Radelet Study, 41 Stan. L. Rev. 121, 126–145 (1988) (examining
accuracy in use of the term “innocent” in death penalty studies and
literature); Marquis, The Myth of Innocence, 95 J. Crim. L. & C. 501,
508 (2005) ( “[w]ords like ‘innocence’ convey enormous moral authority
and are intended to drive the public debate by appealing to a deep and
universal revulsion at the idea that someone who is genuinely blame
less could wrongly suffer for a crime in which he had no involvement”);
People v. Smith, 185 Ill. 2d 532, 545, 708 N. E. 2d 365, 371 (1999)
(“[w]hile a not guilty finding is sometimes equated with a finding of
innocence, that conclusion is erroneous. . . . Rather, [a reversal of
conviction] indicates simply that the prosecution has failed to meet its
burden of proof”).
18 KANSAS v. MARSH

Opinion of the Court

in equipoise, is constitutional. Accordingly, we reverse the
judgment of the Kansas Supreme Court, and remand the
case for further proceedings not inconsistent with this
opinion.
It is so ordered.
 Cite as: 548 U. S. ____ (2006) 1

SCALIA, J., concurring

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
_________________

No. 04–1170
_________________

KANSAS, PETITIONER v. MICHAEL LEE MARSH, II
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE SUPREME COURT OF KANSAS
[June 26, 2006]

JUSTICE SCALIA, concurring.
I join the opinion of the Court. I write separately to
clarify briefly the import of my joinder, and to respond at
somewhat greater length first to JUSTICE STEVENS’ con
tention that this case, and cases like it, do not merit our
attention, and second to JUSTICE SOUTER’s claims about
risks inherent in capital punishment.
I
Part III of the Court’s opinion—which makes plain why
Walton v. Arizona, 497 U. S. 639 (1990), controls this
case—would be sufficient to reverse the judgment below. I
nonetheless join Part IV as well, which describes why
Kansas’s death penalty statute easily satisfies even a
capital jurisprudence as incoherent as ours has become.
In doing so, I do not endorse that incoherence, but adhere
to my previous statement that “I will not . . . vote to up
hold an Eighth Amendment claim that the sentencer’s
discretion has been unlawfully restricted.” Id., at 673
(concurring in part and concurring in judgment).
II
JUSTICE STEVENS’ dissent gives several reasons why this
case, and any criminal case in which the State is the
petitioner, does not deserve our attention. “ ‘[N]o rule of
law,’ ” he says, “ ‘commanded the Court to grant certio
rari.’ ” Post, at 3 (quoting California v. Ramos, 463 U. S.
2 KANSAS v. MARSH

SCALIA, J., concurring

992, 1031 (1983) (STEVENS, J., dissenting)). But that is
true, of course, of almost our entire docket; it is in the very
nature of certiorari jurisdiction. Also self-evident, since
the jurisdiction of the Kansas Supreme Court ends at the
borders of that State, is the fact that “ ‘[n]o other State
would have been required to follow the [Kansas] precedent
if it had been permitted to stand.’ ” Post, at 3 (STEVENS, J.,
dissenting) (quoting Ramos, supra, at 1031 (STEVENS, J.,
dissenting)). But if this signaled the impropriety of grant
ing certiorari, we would never review state-court determi
nations of federal law, even though they patently contra
dict (as the determination below does) the holdings of
other state courts and Federal Courts of Appeals, compare
278 Kan. 520, 534–537, 102 P. 3d 445, 457–459 (2004)
(case below), and State v. Kleypas, 272 Kan. 894, 1005–
1007, 40 P. 3d 139, 225–226 (2001), with, e.g., State v.
Hoffman, 123 Idaho 638, 646–647, 851 P. 2d 934, 942–943
(1993), and Jones v. Dugger, 928 F. 2d 1020, 1029 (CA11
1991)—and indeed, even when they patently contradict
our own decisions. Our principal responsibility under
current practice, however, and a primary basis for the
Constitution’s allowing us to be accorded jurisdiction to
review state-court decisions, see Art. III, §2, cls. 1 and 2, is
to ensure the integrity and uniformity of federal law.1 See
——————
1 The dissent observes that Congress did not initially grant us the full

jurisdiction that the Constitution authorizes, but only allowed us to
review cases rejecting the assertion of governing federal law. See post,
at 3–4, n. (opinion of STEVENS, J.). That is unsurprising and immate
rial. The original Constitution contained few guarantees of individual
rights against the States, and in clashes of governmental authority
there was small risk that the state courts would erroneously side with
the new Federal Government. (In 1789, when the first Judiciary Act
was passed, the Bill of Rights had not yet been adopted, and once it
was, it did not apply against the States, see Barron ex rel. Tiernan v.
Mayor of Baltimore, 7 Pet. 243 (1833).) Congress would have been most
unlikely to contemplate that state courts would erroneously invalidate
state actions on federal grounds. The early history of our jurisdiction
 Cite as: 548 U. S. ____ (2006) 3

SCALIA, J., concurring

this Court’s Rule 10(b), (c). Fulfillment of this responsibil
ity is, to put it mildly, an adequate answer to the charge
that “ ‘[n]othing more than an interest in facilitating the
imposition of the death penalty in [Kansas] justified this
Court’s exercise of its discretion to review the judgment of
the [Kansas] Supreme Court.’ ” Post, at 3 (STEVENS, J.,
dissenting) (quoting Ramos, supra, at 1031 (STEVENS, J.,
dissenting)).
The dissent’s assertion that our holding in Ramos was
“ironi[c],” post, at 2 (opinion of STEVENS, J.), rests on a
misguided view of federalism and, worse still, of a republi
can form of government. Only that can explain the dis
sent’s suggestion that Ramos’s reversal of a state-court
determination somehow undermined state authority. The
California Supreme Court had ruled that a jury instruc
tion inserted into the state penal code by voter initiative,
see 463 U. S., at 995, n. 4, was invalid as a matter of fed
eral constitutional law. See id., at 996, 997, n. 7. When
state courts erroneously invalidate actions taken by the
people of a State (through initiative or through normal
operation of the political branches of their state govern
ment) on state-law grounds, it is generally none of our
business; and our displacing of those judgments would
indeed be an intrusion upon state autonomy. But when
state courts erroneously invalidate such actions because
——————
assuredly does not support the dissent’s awarding of special preference
to the constitutional rights of criminal defendants. Even with respect
to federal defendants (who did enjoy the protections of the Bill of
Rights), “during the first 100 years of the Court’s existence there was
no provision made by Congress for Supreme Court review of federal
criminal convictions, an omission that Congress did not remedy until
1889 and beyond.” R. Stern, E. Gressman, S. Shapiro, & K. Geller,
Supreme Court Practice 66 (8th ed. 2002). In any case, present law is
plain. The 1988 statute cited by the dissent and forming the basis of
our current certiorari jurisdiction places States and defendants in
precisely the same position. They are both entitled to petition for our
review.
4 KANSAS v. MARSH

SCALIA, J., concurring

they believe federal law requires it—and especially when
they do so because they believe the Federal Constitution
requires it—review by this Court, far from undermining
state autonomy, is the only possible way to vindicate it.
When a federal constitutional interdict against the duly
expressed will of the people of a State is erroneously pro
nounced by a State’s highest court, no authority in the
State—not even a referendum agreed to by all its citi
zens—can undo the error. Thus, a general presumption
against such review displays not respect for the States,
but a complacent willingness to allow judges to strip the
people of the power to govern themselves. When we cor
rect a state court’s federal errors, we return power to the
State, and to its people.
That is why our decision in Ramos was necessary. Our
solemn responsibility is not merely to determine whether
a State Supreme Court “ha[s] adequately protected [a
defendant’s] rights under the Federal Constitution,” post,
at 2 (STEVENS, J., dissenting). It is to ensure that when
courts speak in the name of the Federal Constitution, they
disregard none of its guarantees—neither those that
assure the rights of criminal defendants, nor those that
assure what Justice Black, in his famous dissent in In re
Winship, 397 U. S. 358, 385 (1970), called “the most fun
damental individual liberty of our people—the right of
each man to participate in the self-government of his
society.” Turning a blind eye to federal constitutional
error that benefits criminal defendants, allowing it to
permeate in varying fashion each state Supreme Court’s
jurisprudence, would change the uniform “law of the land”
into a crazy quilt. And on top of it all, of course, what the
dissent proposes avowedly favors one party to the case:
When a criminal defendant loses a questionable constitu
tional point, we may grant review; when the State loses,
we must deny it. While it might be appropriate for Con
gress to place such a thumb upon the scales of our power
 Cite as: 548 U. S. ____ (2006) 5

SCALIA, J., concurring

to review, it seems to me a peculiar mode of decisionmak
ing for judges sworn to “impartially discharge . . . all the
duties” of their office, 28 U. S. C. §453.
Our decision to grant certiorari is guided by the consid
erations set forth in Rule 10. None of them turns on the
identity of the party that the asserted misapplication of
federal law has harmed. When state legislation is
thwarted—not on the basis of state law, but on the basis of
a questionable application of the Federal Constitution or
laws—I shall continue to vote to grant the resulting peti
tion for certiorari.
III
Finally, I must say a few words (indeed, more than a
few) in response to Part III of JUSTICE SOUTER’s dissent.
This contains the disclaimer that the dissenters are not
(yet) ready to “generaliz[e] about the soundness of capital
sentencing across the country,” post, at 9; but that is in
fact precisely what they do. The dissent essentially argues
that capital punishment is such an undesirable institu
tion—it results in the condemnation of such a large num
ber of innocents—that any legal rule which eliminates its
pronouncement, including the one favored by the dissent
ers in the present case, should be embraced. See ibid.
As a general rule, I do not think it appropriate for
judges to heap either praise or censure upon a legislative
measure that comes before them, lest it be thought that
their validation, invalidation, or interpretation of it is
driven by their desire to expand or constrict what they
personally approve or disapprove as a matter of policy. In
the present case, for example, people might leap to the
conclusion that the dissenters’ views on whether Kansas’s
equipoise rule is constitutional are determined by their
personal disapproval of an institution that has been de
mocratically adopted by 38 States and the United States.
But of course that requires no leap; just a willingness to
6 KANSAS v. MARSH

SCALIA, J., concurring

take the dissenters at their word. For as I have described,
the dissenters’ very argument is that imposition of the
death penalty should be minimized by invalidation of the
equipoise rule because it is a bad, “risk[y],” and “haz
ard[ous]” idea, ibid. A broader conclusion that people
should derive, however (and I would not consider this
much of a leap either), is that the dissenters’ encumbering
of the death penalty in other cases, with unwarranted
restrictions neither contained in the text of the Constitu
tion nor reflected in two centuries of practice under it, will
be the product of their policy views—views not shared by
the vast majority of the American people. The dissenters’
proclamation of their policy agenda in the present case is
especially striking because it is nailed to the door of the
wrong church—that is, set forth in a case litigating a rule
that has nothing to do with the evaluation of guilt or
innocence. There are, of course, many cases in which the
rule at issue does serve that function, see, e.g., House v.
Bell, 547 U. S. ___ (2006). (Marsh himself has earned a
remand by application of one such rule, see ante, at 2–3.)
But as the Court observes, see ante, at 16–17, guilt or inno
cence is logically disconnected to the challenge in this case
to sentencing standards. The only time the equipoise pro
vision is relevant is when the State has proved a defen
dant guilty of a capital crime.2
——————
2 Not only are the dissent’s views on the erroneous imposition of the

death penalty irrelevant to the present case, but the dissent’s proposed
holding on the equipoise issue will not necessarily work to defendants’
advantage. The equipoise provision of the Kansas statute imposes the
death penalty only when the State proves beyond a reasonable doubt
that mitigating factors do not outweigh the aggravators. See ante, at 2.
If we were to disallow Kansas’s scheme, the State could, as Marsh
freely admits, replace it with a scheme requiring the State to prove by a
mere preponderance of the evidence that the aggravators outweigh the
mitigators. See Tr. of Oral Rearg. 36. I doubt that any defense counsel
would accept this trade. The “preponderance” rule, while it sounds
better, would almost surely produce more death sentences than an
 Cite as: 548 U. S. ____ (2006) 7

SCALIA, J., concurring

There exists in some parts of the world sanctimonious
criticism of America’s death penalty, as somehow unwor
thy of a civilized society. (I say sanctimonious, because
most of the countries to which these finger-waggers belong
had the death penalty themselves until recently—and
indeed, many of them would still have it if the democratic
will prevailed.3) It is a certainty that the opinion of a
near-majority of the United States Supreme Court to the
effect that our system condemns many innocent defen
dants to death will be trumpeted abroad as vindication of
these criticisms. For that reason, I take the trouble to
point out that the dissenting opinion has nothing substan
tial to support it.
It should be noted at the outset that the dissent does not
discuss a single case—not one—in which it is clear that a
person was executed for a crime he did not commit. If
such an event had occurred in recent years, we would not
——————
“equipoise beyond a reasonable doubt” requirement.
3 It is commonly recognized that “[m]any European countries . . . abol

ished the death penalty in spite of public opinion rather than because of
it.” Bibas, Transparency and Participation in Criminal Procedure, 81
N. Y. U. L. Rev. 911, 931–932 (2006). See also id., at 932, n. 88.
Abolishing the death penalty has been made a condition of joining the
Council of Europe, which is in turn a condition of obtaining the eco
nomic benefits of joining the European Union. See Waters, Mediating
Norms and Identity: The Role of Transnational Judicial Dialogue in
Creating and Enforcing International Law, 93 Geo. L. J. 487, 525
(2005); Demleitner, Is There a Future for Leniency in the U. S. Crimi
nal Justice System? 103 Mich. L. Rev. 1231, 1256, and n. 88 (2005).
The European Union advocates against the death-penalty even in
America; there is a separate death-penalty page on the website of the
Delegation of the European Commission to the U. S. A. See
http://www.eurunion.org/legislat/deathpenalty/deathpenhome.htm (as
visited June 17, 2006, and available in Clerk of Court’s case file). The
views of the European Union have been relied upon by Justices of this
Court (including all four dissenters today) in narrowing the power of
the American people to impose capital punishment. See, e.g., Atkins v.
Virginia, 536 U. S. 304, 317, n. 21 (2002) (citing, for the views of “the
world community,” the Brief for the European Union as Amicus Curiae).
8 KANSAS v. MARSH

SCALIA, J., concurring

have to hunt for it; the innocent’s name would be shouted
from the rooftops by the abolition lobby. The dissent
makes much of the new-found capacity of DNA testing to
establish innocence. But in every case of an executed
defendant of which I am aware, that technology has con
firmed guilt.
This happened, for instance, only a few months ago in
the case of Roger Coleman. Coleman was convicted of the
gruesome rape and murder of his sister-in-law, but he
persuaded many that he was actually innocent and be
came the poster-child for the abolitionist lobby. See Glod
& Shear, DNA Tests Confirm Guilt of Man Executed by
Va., Washington Post, Jan. 13, 2006, p. A1; Dao, DNA Ties
Man Executed in ’92 to the Murder He Denied, N. Y.
Times, Jan. 13, 2006, p. A14. Around the time of his
eventual execution, “his picture was on the cover of Time
magazine (‘This Man Might Be Innocent. This Man Is Due
to Die’). He was interviewed from death row on ‘Larry
King Live,’ the ‘Today’ show, ‘Primetime Live,’ ‘Good
Morning America’ and ‘The Phil Donahue Show.’ ”
Frankel, Burden of Proof, Washington Post, May 14, 2006,
pp. W8, W11. Even one Justice of this Court, in an opin
ion filed shortly before the execution, cautioned that
“Coleman has now produced substantial evidence that he
may be innocent of the crime for which he was sentenced
to die.” Coleman v. Thompson, 504 U. S. 188, 189 (1992)
(Blackmun, J., dissenting). Coleman ultimately failed a
lie-detector test offered by the Governor of Virginia as a
condition of a possible stay; he was executed on May 20,
1992. Frankel, supra, at W23; Glod & Shear, Warner
Orders DNA Testing in Case of Man Executed in ’92,
Washington Post, Jan. 6, 2006, pp. A1, A6.
In the years since then, Coleman’s case became a rally
ing point for abolitionists, who hoped it would offer what
they consider the “Holy Grail: proof from a test tube that
an innocent person had been executed.” Frankel, supra, at
 Cite as: 548 U. S. ____ (2006) 9

SCALIA, J., concurring

W24. But earlier this year, a DNA test ordered by a later
Governor of Virginia proved that Coleman was guilty, see,
e.g., Glod & Shear, DNA Tests Confirm Guilt of Man
Executed by Va., supra, at A1; Dao, supra, at A14, even
though his defense team had “proved” his innocence and
had even identified “the real killer” (with whom they
eventually settled a defamation suit). See Frankel, supra,
at W23. And Coleman’s case is not unique. See Truth and
Consequences: The Penalty of Death, in Debating the
Death Penalty: Should America Have Capital Punish
ment? The Experts on Both Sides Make Their Best Case,
128–129 (H. Bedau & P. Cassell eds. 2004) (discussing the
cases of supposed innocents Rick McGinn and Derek
Barnabei, whose guilt was also confirmed by DNA tests).
Instead of identifying and discussing any particular case
or cases of mistaken execution, the dissent simply cites a
handful of studies that bemoan the alleged prevalence of
wrongful death sentences. One study (by Lanier and
Acker) is quoted by the dissent as claiming that “ ‘more
than 110’ death row prisoners have been released since
1973 upon findings that they were innocent of the crimes
charged, and ‘hundreds of additional wrongful convictions
in potentially capital cases have been documented over the
past century.’ ” Post, at 8 (opinion of SOUTER, J.). For the
first point, Lanier and Acker cite the work of the Death
Penalty Information Center (more about that below) and
an article in a law review jointly authored by Radelet,
Lofquist, and Bedau (two professors of sociology and a
professor of philosophy). For the second point, they cite
only a 1987 article by Bedau and Radelet. See Miscar
riages of Justice in Potentially Capital Cases, 40 Stan.
L. Rev. 21. In the very same paragraph which the dissent
quotes, Lanier and Acker also refer to that 1987 article as
“hav[ing] identified 23 individuals who, in their judgment,
were convicted and executed in this country during the
20th century notwithstanding their innocence.” Lanier &
10 KANSAS v. MARSH

SCALIA, J., concurring

Acker, Capital Punishment, the Moratorium Movement,
and Empirical Questions, 10 Psychology, Public Policy &
Law 577, 593 (2004). This 1987 article has been highly
influential in the abolitionist world. Hundreds of aca
demic articles, including those relied on by today’s dissent,
have cited it. It also makes its appearance in judicial
decisions—cited recently in a six-judge dissent in House v.
Bell, 386 F. 3d 668, 708 (CA6 2004) (en banc) (Merritt, J.,
dissenting), for the proposition that “the system is allow
ing some innocent defendants to be executed.” The article
therefore warrants some further observations.
The 1987 article’s obsolescence began at the moment of
publication. The most recent executions it considered
were in 1984, 1964, and 1951; the rest predate the Allied
victory in World War II. (Two of the supposed innocents
are Sacco and Vanzetti.) Bedau & Radelet, supra, at 73.
Even if the innocence claims made in this study were true,
all except (perhaps) the 1984 example would cast no light
upon the functioning of our current system of capital
adjudication. The legal community’s general attitude
toward criminal defendants, the legal protections States
afford, the constitutional guarantees this Court enforces,
and the scope of federal habeas review, are all vastly
different from what they were in 1961. So are the scien
tific means of establishing guilt, and hence innocence—
which are now so striking in their operation and effect
that they are the subject of more than one popular TV
series. (One of these new means, of course, is DNA test
ing—which the dissent seems to think is primarily a way
to identify defendants erroneously convicted, rather than a
highly effective way to avoid conviction of the innocent.)
But their current relevance aside, this study’s conclu
sions are unverified. And if the support for its most sig
nificant conclusion—the execution of 23 innocents in the
20th century—is any indication of its accuracy, neither it,
nor any study so careless as to rely upon it, is worthy of
 Cite as: 548 U. S. ____ (2006) 11

SCALIA, J., concurring

credence. The only execution of an innocent man it alleges
to have occurred after the restoration of the death penalty
in 1976—the Florida execution of James Adams in 1984—
is the easiest case to verify. As evidence of Adams’ inno
cence, it describes a hair that could not have been his as
being “clutched in the victim’s hand,” Bedau & Radelet,
supra, at 91. The hair was not in the victim’s hand; “[i]t
was a remnant of a sweeping of the ambulance and so
could have come from another source.” Markman & Cas-
sell, Protecting the Innocent: A Response to the Bedau-
Radelet Study, 41 Stan. L. Rev. 121, 131 (1988). The
study also claims that a witness who “heard a voice inside
the victim’s home at the time of the crime” testified that
the “voice was a woman’s,” Bedau & Radelet, supra, at 91.
The witness’s actual testimony was that the voice, which
said “ ‘ “In the name of God, don’t do it” ’ ” (and was hence
unlikely to have been the voice of anyone but the male
victim), “ ‘sounded “kind of like a woman’s voice, kind of
like strangling or something . . . .” ’ ” Markman & Cassell,
Protecting the Innocent, at 130. Bedau and Radelet failed
to mention that upon arrest on the afternoon of the mur
der Adams was found with some $200 in his pocket—one
bill of which “was stained with type O blood. When Ad
ams was asked about the blood on the money, he said that
it came from a cut on his finger. His blood was type AB,
however, while the victim’s was type O.” Id., at 132.
Among the other unmentioned, incriminating details: that
the victim’s eyeglasses were found in Adams’ car, along
with jewelry belonging to the victim, and clothing of Ad
ams’ stained with type O blood. Ibid. This is just a sam
ple of the evidence arrayed against this “innocent.” See
id., at 128–133, 148–150.
Critics have questioned the study’s findings with regard
to all its other cases of execution of alleged innocents for
which “appellate opinions . . . set forth the facts proved at
trial in detail sufficient to permit a neutral observer to
12 KANSAS v. MARSH

SCALIA, J., concurring

assess the validity of the authors’ conclusions.” Id., at
134. (For the rest, there was not “a reasonably complete
account of the facts . . . readily available,” id., at 145.) As
to those cases, the only readily verifiable ones, the authors
of the 1987 study later acknowledged, “We agree with our
critics that we have not ‘proved’ these executed defendants
to be innocent; we never claimed that we had.” Bedau &
Radelet, The Myth of Infallibility: A Reply to Markman
and Cassell, 41 Stan. L. Rev. 161, 164 (1988). One would
have hoped that this disclaimer of the study’s most strik
ing conclusion, if not the study’s dubious methodology,
would have prevented it from being cited as authority in
the pages of the United States Reports. But alas, it is too
late for that. Although today’s dissent relies on the study
only indirectly, the two dissenters who were on the Court
in January 1993 have already embraced it. “One impres
sive study,” they noted (referring to the 1987 study), “has
concluded that 23 innocent people have been executed in
the United States in this century, including one as re
cently as 1984.” Herrera v. Collins, 506 U. S. 390, 430, n. 1
(1993) (Blackmun, J., joined by STEVENS and SOUTER, JJ.,
dissenting).4
Remarkably avoiding any claim of erroneous executions,
the dissent focuses on the large numbers of non-executed
“exonerees” paraded by various professors. It speaks as
though exoneration came about through the operation of
some outside force to correct the mistakes of our legal
system, rather than as a consequence of the functioning of
our legal system. Reversal of an erroneous conviction on
appeal or on habeas, or the pardoning of an innocent
——————
4 See also Callins v. Collins, 510 U. S. 1141, 1158, n. 8 (1994) (Black

mun, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari) (“Innocent persons have
been executed, see Bedau & Radelet, Miscarriages of Justice in Poten
tially Capital Cases, 40 Stan. L. Rev. 21, 36, 173–179 (1987), perhaps
recently, see Herrera v. Collins, 506 U. S. 390 (1993), and will continue to
be executed under our death penalty scheme”).
 Cite as: 548 U. S. ____ (2006) 13

SCALIA, J., concurring

condemnee through executive clemency, demonstrates not
the failure of the system but its success. Those devices are
part and parcel of the multiple assurances that are ap
plied before a death sentence is carried out.
Of course even in identifying exonerees, the dissent is
willing to accept anybody’s say-so. It engages in no critical
review, but merely parrots articles or reports that support
its attack on the American criminal justice system. The
dissent places significant weight, for instance, on the
Illinois Report (compiled by the appointees of an Illinois
Governor who had declared a moratorium upon the death
penalty and who eventually commuted all death sentences
in the State, see Warden, Illinois Death Penalty Reform:
How It Happened, What It Promises, 95 J. Crim. L. & C.
381, 406–407, 410 (2006)), which it claims shows that
“false verdicts” are “remarkable in number.” Post, at 9
(opinion of SOUTER, J.). The dissent claims that this Re
port identifies 13 inmates released from death row after
they were determined to be innocent. To take one of these
cases, discussed by the dissent as an example of a judg
ment “as close to innocence as any judgments courts nor
mally render,” post, at 7, n. 2: In People v. Smith, 185 Ill.
2d 532, 708 N. E. 2d 365 (1999) the defendant was twice
convicted of murder. After his first trial, the Supreme
Court of Illinois “reversed [his] conviction based upon
certain evidentiary errors” and remanded his case for a
new trial. Id., at 534, 708 N. E. 2d, at 366. The second
jury convicted Smith again. The Supreme Court of Illinois
again reversed the conviction because it found that the
evidence was insufficient to establish guilt beyond a rea
sonable doubt. Id., at 542–543, 708 N. E. 2d, at 370–371.
The court explained:
“While a not guilty finding is sometimes equated with
a finding of innocence, that conclusion is erroneous.
Courts do not find people guilty or innocent. . . . A not
14 KANSAS v. MARSH

SCALIA, J., concurring

guilty verdict expresses no view as to a defendant’s
innocence. Rather, [a reversal of conviction] indicates
simply that the prosecution has failed to meet its bur
den of proof.” Id., at 545, 708 N. E. 2d, at 371.
This case alone suffices to refute the dissent’s claim that
the Illinois Report distinguishes between “exoneration of a
convict because of actual innocence, and reversal of a
judgment because of legal error affecting conviction or
sentence but not inconsistent with guilt in fact,” post, at 7,
n. 2. The broader point, however, is that it is utterly
impossible to regard “exoneration”—however casually
defined—as a failure of the capital justice system, rather
than as a vindication of its effectiveness in releasing not
only defendants who are innocent, but those whose guilt
has not been established beyond a reasonable doubt.
Another of the dissent’s leading authorities on exonera
tion of the innocent is Gross, Jacoby, Matheson, Montgom
ery, & Patil, Exonerations in the United States 1989
Through 2003, 95 J. Crim. L. & C. 523 (2006) (hereinafter
Gross). The dissent quotes that study’s self-
congratulatory “criteria” of exoneration—seemingly so
rigorous that no one could doubt the study’s reliability.
See post, at 8, n. 3 (opinion of SOUTER, J.). But in fact that
article, like the others cited, is notable not for its rigorous
investigation and analysis, but for the fervor of its belief
that the American justice system is condemning the inno
cent “in numbers,” as the dissent puts it, “never imagined
before the development of DNA tests.” Post, at 6 (opinion
of SOUTER, J.). Among the article’s list of 74 “exonerees,”
Gross 529, is Jay Smith of Pennsylvania. Smith—a school
principal—earned three death sentences for slaying one of
his teachers and her two young children. See Smith v.
Holtz, 210 F. 3d 186, 188 (CA3 2000). His retrial for triple
murder was barred on double jeopardy grounds because of
prosecutorial misconduct during the first trial. Id., at 194.
 Cite as: 548 U. S. ____ (2006) 15

SCALIA, J., concurring

But Smith could not leave well enough alone. He had the
gall to sue, under 42 U. S. C. §1983, for false imprison
ment. The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed
the jury verdict for the defendants, observing along the
way that “our confidence in Smith’s convictions is not
diminished in the least. We remain firmly convinced of
the integrity of those guilty verdicts.” 210 F. 3d, at 198.
Another “exonerated” murderer in the Gross study is
Jeremy Sheets, convicted in Nebraska. His accomplice in
the rape and murder of a girl had been secretly tape re
corded; he “admitted that he drove the car used in the
murder . . . , and implicated Sheets in the murder.” Sheets
v. Butera, 389 F. 3d 772, 775 (CA8 2004). The accomplice
was arrested and eventually described the murder in
greater detail, after which a plea agreement was arranged,
conditioned on the accomplice’s full cooperation. Ibid.
The resulting taped confession, which implicated Sheets,
was “[t]he crucial portion of the State’s case,” State v.
Sheets, 260 Neb. 325, 327, 618 N. W. 2d 117, 122 (2000).
But the accomplice committed suicide in jail, depriving
Sheets of the opportunity to cross-examine him. This, the
Nebraska Supreme Court held, rendered the evidence
inadmissible under the Sixth Amendment. Id., at 328,
335–351, 618 N. W. 2d, at 123, 127–136. After the central
evidence was excluded, the State did not retry Sheets.
Sheets v. Butera, 389 F. 3d, at 776. Sheets brought a
§1983 claim; the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth
Circuit affirmed the District Court’s grant of summary
judgment against him. Id., at 780. Sheets also sought the
$1,000 he had been required to pay to the Nebraska Vic
tim’s Compensation Fund; the State Attorney General—
far from concluding that Sheets had been “exonerated”
and was entitled to the money—refused to return it. The
court action left open the possibility that Sheets could be
retried, and the Attorney General did “not believe the
reversal on the ground of improper admission of evidence
16 KANSAS v. MARSH

SCALIA, J., concurring

. . . is a favorable disposition of charges,” Neb. Op. Atty.
Gen. No. 01036 (Nov. 9), 2001 WL 1503144, *3.
In its inflation of the word “exoneration,” the Gross
article hardly stands alone; mischaracterization of
reversible error as actual innocence is endemic in
abolitionist rhetoric, and other prominent catalogues of
“innocence” in the death-penalty context suffer from
the same defect. Perhaps the best-known of them is
the List of Those Freed From Death Row, maintained by
the Death Penalty Information Center. See http://www.
deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=6&did=110. This
includes the cases from the Gross article described above,
but also enters some dubious candidates of its own.
Delbert Tibbs is one of them. We considered his case in
Tibbs v. Florida, 457 U. S. 31 (1982), concluding that the
Double Jeopardy Clause does not bar a retrial when a
conviction is “revers[ed] based on the weight, rather than
the sufficiency, of the evidence,” id., at 32. The case in
volved a man and a woman hitchhiking together in Flor
ida. A driver who picked them up sodomized and raped
the woman, and killed her boyfriend. She eventually
escaped and positively identified Tibbs. See id., at 32–33.
The Florida Supreme Court reversed the conviction on a 4
to-3 vote. 337 So. 2d 788 (1976). The Florida courts then
grappled with whether Tibbs could be retried without
violating the Double Jeopardy Clause. The Florida Su
preme Court determined not only that there was no dou
ble-jeopardy problem, 397 So. 2d 1120, 1127 (1981) (per
curiam), but that the very basis on which it had reversed
the conviction was no longer valid law, id., at 1125, and
that its action in “reweigh[ing] the evidence” in Tibbs’ case
had been “clearly improper,” id., at 1126. After we af
firmed the Florida Supreme Court, however, the State felt
compelled to drop the charges. The State Attorney ex
plained this to the Florida Commission on Capital Cases:
“ ‘By the time of the retrial, [the] witness/victim . . . had
 Cite as: 548 U. S. ____ (2006) 17

SCALIA, J., concurring

progressed from a marijuana smoker to a crack user and I
could not put her up on the stand, so I declined to prose
cute. Tibbs, in my opinion, was never an innocent man
wrongfully accused. He was a lucky human being. He
was guilty, he was lucky and now he is free. His 1974
conviction was not a miscarriage of justice.’ ” Florida
Commission on Capital Cases, Case Histories: A Review of
24 Individuals Released From Death Row 136–137 (rev.
Sept. 10, 2002) http://www.floridacapitalcases.state.fl.us/
Publications/innocentsproject.pdf. Other state officials
involved made similar points. Id., at 137.
Of course, even with its distorted concept of what consti
tutes “exoneration,” the claims of the Gross article are
fairly modest: Between 1989 and 2003, the authors iden
tify 340 “exonerations” nationwide—not just for capital
cases, mind you, nor even just for murder convictions, but
for various felonies. Gross 529. Joshua Marquis, a dis
trict attorney in Oregon, recently responded to this article
as follows:
“[L]et’s give the professor the benefit of the doubt: let’s
assume that he understated the number of innocents
by roughly a factor of 10, that instead of 340 there
were 4,000 people in prison who weren’t involved in
the crime in any way. During that same 15 years,
there were more than 15 million felony convictions
across the country. That would make the error rate
.027 percent—or, to put it another way, a success rate
of 99.973 percent.” The Innocent and the Shammed,
N. Y. Times, Jan. 26, 2006, p. A23.
The dissent’s suggestion that capital defendants are espe
cially liable to suffer from the lack of 100% perfection in
our criminal justice system is implausible. Capital cases
are given especially close scrutiny at every level, which is
why in most cases many years elapse before the sentence
is executed. And of course capital cases receive special
18 KANSAS v. MARSH

SCALIA, J., concurring

attention in the application of executive clemency. Indeed,
one of the arguments made by abolitionists is that the
process of finally completing all the appeals and reexami
nations of capital sentences is so lengthy, and thus so
expensive for the State, that the game is not worth the
candle. The proof of the pudding, of course, is that as far
as anyone can determine (and many are looking), none of
cases included in the .027% error rate for American ver
dicts involved a capital defendant erroneously executed.
Since 1976 there have been approximately a half million
murders in the United States. In that time, 7,000 mur
derers have been sentenced to death; about 950 of them
have been executed; and about 3,700 inmates are cur
rently on death row. See Marquis, The Myth of Inno
cence, 95 J. Crim. L. & C. 501, 518 (2006). As a conse
quence of the sensitivity of the criminal justice system to
the due-process rights of defendants sentenced to death,
almost two-thirds of all death sentences are overturned.
See ibid. “Virtually none” of these reversals, however, are
attributable to a defendant’s “ ‘actual innocence.’ ” Ibid.
Most are based on legal errors that have little or nothing
to do with guilt. See id., at 519–520. The studies cited by
the dissent demonstrate nothing more.
Like other human institutions, courts and juries are not
perfect. One cannot have a system of criminal punish
ment without accepting the possibility that someone will
be punished mistakenly. That is a truism, not a revela
tion. But with regard to the punishment of death in the
current American system, that possibility has been re
duced to an insignificant minimum. This explains why
those ideologically driven to ferret out and proclaim a
mistaken modern execution have not a single verifiable
case to point to, whereas it is easy as pie to identify plainly
guilty murderers who have been set free. The American
people have determined that the good to be derived from
capital punishment—in deterrence, and perhaps most of
 Cite as: 548 U. S. ____ (2006) 19

SCALIA, J., concurring

all in the meting out of condign justice for horrible
crimes—outweighs the risk of error. It is no proper part of
the business of this Court, or of its Justices, to second-
guess that judgment, much less to impugn it before the
world, and less still to frustrate it by imposing judicially
invented obstacles to its execution.
 Cite as: 548 U. S. ____ (2006) 1

STEVENS, J., dissenting

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
_________________

No. 04–1170
_________________

KANSAS, PETITIONER v. MICHAEL LEE MARSH, II
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE SUPREME COURT OF KANSAS
[June 26, 2006]

JUSTICE STEVENS, dissenting.
Having joined Justice Blackmun’s dissent from the
plurality’s opinion in Walton v. Arizona, 497 U. S. 639,
649–652 (1990), I necessarily also subscribe to the views
expressed by JUSTICE SOUTER today. I write separately
for two reasons: to explain why agreement with Justice
Blackmun’s dissent is fully consistent with refusing to
read Walton as “control[ling],” but see ante, at 5 (opinion
of the Court), and to explain why the grant of certiorari in
this case was a misuse of our discretion.
Under Justice Blackmun’s understanding of Arizona
law, Walton did present exactly the same issue before us
today. The Arizona statute at issue required the judge to
impose death upon finding aggravating factors if “ ‘there
are no mitigating circumstances sufficiently substantial to
call for leniency.’ ” 497 U. S., at 644 (quoting Ariz. Rev.
Stat. Ann. §13–703(E) (West 1989)). In Justice Black
mun’s view, Arizona case law indicated “that a defendant’s
mitigating evidence will be deemed ‘sufficiently substan
tial to call for leniency’ only if the mitigating factors ‘out
weigh’ those in aggravation.” 497 U. S., at 687. Accord
ingly, Justice Blackmun believed that we confronted the
constitutionality of a statute that mandated death when
the scales were evenly balanced. Ibid.
But Justice Blackmun never concluded that the plural
ity similarly read Arizona case law as “requir[ing] a capi
tal sentence in a case where aggravating and mitigating
2 KANSAS v. MARSH

STEVENS, J., dissenting

circumstances are evenly balanced.” Id., at 688. To the
contrary, he observed that “the plurality does not even
acknowledge that this is the dispositive question.” Ibid.
Because Justice Blackmun did not read the plurality
opinion as confronting the problem of equipoise that he
believed Arizona law to present, my join of his dissent is
consistent with my conclusion that stare decisis does not
bind us today. As JUSTICE SOUTER explains, post, at 2, n.
1, the Walton plurality painstakingly avoided an express
endorsement of a rule that allows a prosecutor to argue,
and allows a judge to instruct the jury, that if the scales
are evenly balanced when the choice is between life and
death, the law requires the more severe penalty.
There is a further difference between this case and
Walton—one that should have kept us from granting
certiorari in the first place. In Walton, the defendant
petitioned for certiorari, and our grant enabled us to con
sider whether the Arizona Supreme Court had adequately
protected his rights under the Federal Constitution. In
this case, by contrast, the State of Kansas petitioned us to
review a ruling of its own Supreme Court on the grounds
that the Kansas court had granted more protection to a
Kansas litigant than the Federal Constitution required. A
policy of judicial restraint would allow the highest court of
the State to be the final decisionmaker in a case of this
kind. See Brigham City v. Stuart, 547 U. S. __, __ (2006)
(STEVENS, J., concurring) (slip op., at 3).
There is a remarkable similarity between the decision to
grant certiorari in this case and our comparable decision
in California v. Ramos, 463 U. S. 992 (1983). In Ramos,
we reviewed a decision of the California Supreme Court
that had invalidated a standard jury instruction concern
ing the Governor’s power to commute life without parole
sentences—an instruction that was unique to California.
By a vote of 5 to 4, the Court reversed the judgment of the
state court, concluding—somewhat ironically—that “the
 Cite as: 548 U. S. ____ (2006) 3

STEVENS, J., dissenting

wisdom of the decision to permit juror consideration of
possible commutation is best left to the States.” Id., at
1014.
In response I asked, as I do again today, “what harm
would have been done to the administration of justice by
state courts if the [Kansas] court had been left undis
turbed in its determination[?]” Id., at 1030. “If it were
true that this instruction may make the difference be
tween life and death in a case in which the scales are
otherwise evenly balanced, that is a reason why the in
struction should not be given—not a reason for giving it.”
Ibid. “No matter how trivial the impact of the instruction
may be, it is fundamentally wrong for the presiding judge
at the trial—who should personify the evenhanded ad
ministration of justice—to tell the jury, indirectly to be
sure, that doubt concerning the proper penalty should be
resolved in favor of [death].” Ibid.
As in Ramos, in this case “no rule of law commanded the
Court to grant certiorari.” Id., at 1031. Furthermore,
“[n]o other State would have been required to follow the
[Kansas] precedent if it had been permitted to stand.
Nothing more than an interest in facilitating the imposi
tion of the death penalty in [Kansas] justified this Court’s
exercise of its discretion to review the judgment of the
[Kansas] Supreme Court.” Ibid. And “[t]hat interest, in
my opinion, is not sufficient to warrant this Court’s review
of the validity of a jury instruction when the wisdom of
giving that instruction is plainly a matter that is best left
to the States.” Ibid.*
——————
* JUSTICE SCALIA takes issue with my approach, suggesting that the
federal interests vindicated by our review are equally weighty whether
the state court found for the defendant or for the State. Ante, at 2–5
(concurring opinion). In so doing, he overlooks the separate federal
interest in ensuring that no person be convicted or sentenced in viola
tion of the Federal Constitution—an interest entirely absent when the
State is the petitioner. It is appropriate—and certainly impartial, but
4 KANSAS v. MARSH

STEVENS, J., dissenting

We decided Ramos on the same day as Michigan v.
Long, 463 U. S. 1032 (1983). Prior to that time, “we had
virtually no interest” in criminal cases where States
sought to set aside the rulings of their own courts. Id., at
1069 (STEVENS, J., dissenting). Although in recent years
the trend has been otherwise, I continue to hope “that a
future Court will recognize the error of this allocation of
resources,” id., at 1070, and return to our older and better
practice of restraint.

——————
see ante, at 4–5—to take this difference in federal interests into account
in considering whether to grant a petition for writ of certiorari.
JUSTICE SCALIA also fails to explain why there is such an urgent need
“to ensure the integrity and uniformity of federal law.” Ante, at 2. If
this perceived need is a “primary basis for the Constitution’s allowing
us to be accorded jurisdiction to review state-court decisions,” ibid.
(citing Art. III, §2, cls. 1 and 2), then one would think that the First
Judiciary Act would have given us jurisdiction to review all decisions
based on the Federal Constitution coming out of state courts. But it did
not. Unconcerned about JUSTICE SCALIA’s “crazy quilt,” ante, at 4, the
First Congress only provided us with jurisdiction over such cases
“where [there] is drawn in question the validity of a statute of, or an
authority exercised under any State, on the ground of their being
repugnant to the constitution, treaties or laws of the United States, and
the decision is in favour of such their validity.” Act of Sept. 24, 1789,
§25, 1 Stat. 85 (emphasis added). Not until 1914 did we have jurisdic
tion over decisions from state courts which arguably overprotected
federal constitutional rights at the expense of state laws. Act of Dec.
23, 1914, ch. 2, 38 Stat. 790; see also Delaware v. Van Arsdall, 475 U. S.
673, 694–697 (1986) (STEVENS, J., dissenting). Even then, our review was
only by writ of certiorari, whereas until 1988 defendants had a right to
appeal to us in cases in which state courts had upheld the validity of state
statutes challenged on federal constitutional grounds. See 28 U. S. C.
§1257 (1982 ed.). In other words, during the entire period between
1789 and 1988, the laws enacted by Congress placed greater weight on
the vindication of federal rights than on the interest in the uniformity
of federal law.
 Cite as: 548 U. S. ____ (2006) 1

SOUTER, J., dissenting

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
_________________

No. 04–1170
_________________

KANSAS, PETITIONER v. MICHAEL LEE MARSH, II
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE SUPREME COURT OF KANSAS
[June 26, 2006]

JUSTICE SOUTER, with whom JUSTICE STEVENS, JUSTICE
GINSBURG, and JUSTICE BREYER join, dissenting.
I
Kansas’s capital sentencing statute provides that a
defendant “shall be sentenced to death” if, by unanimous
vote, “the jury finds beyond a reasonable doubt that one or
more aggravating circumstances . . . exist and . . . that the
existence of such aggravating circumstances is not out
weighed by any mitigating circumstances which are found
to exist.” Kan. Stat. Ann. §21–4624(e) (1995). The Su
preme Court of Kansas has read this provision to require
imposition of the death penalty “[i]n the event of equi
poise, [that is,] the jury’s determination that the balance
of any aggravating circumstances and any mitigating
circumstances weighed equal.” 278 Kan. 520, 534, 102
P. 3d 445, 457 (2004) (case below); see also State v. Kley
pas, 272 Kan. 894, 1016, 40 P. 3d 139, 232 (2001) (stating
that the language of §21–4624(e) “provides that in doubt
ful cases the jury must return a sentence of death”).
Given this construction, the state court held the law un
constitutional on the ground that the Eighth Amendment
requires that a “ ‘tie g[o] to the defendant’ when life or
death is at issue.” Ibid. Because I agree with the Kansas
judges that the Constitution forbids a mandatory death
penalty in what they describe as “doubtful cases,” when
aggravating and mitigating factors are of equal weight, I
2 KANSAS v. MARSH

SOUTER, J., dissenting

respectfully dissent.1
II
More than 30 years ago, this Court explained that the
Eighth Amendment’s guarantee against cruel and unusual
punishment barred imposition of the death penalty under
statutory schemes so inarticulate that sentencing discre
tion produced wanton and freakish results. See Furman v.
Georgia, 408 U. S. 238, 309–310 (1972) (per curiam) (Stew
art, J., concurring) (“[T]he Eighth and Fourteenth Amend
ments cannot tolerate the infliction of a sentence of death
under legal systems that permit this unique penalty to be
. . . wantonly and . . . freakishly imposed” on a “capriciously
selected random handful” of individuals). The Constitution
was held to require, instead, a system structured to pro
duce reliable, Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U. S. 280,
305 (1976) (plurality opinion), rational, Jurek v. Texas, 428
U. S. 262, 276 (1976) (joint opinion of Stewart, Powell, and
STEVENS, JJ.), and rationally reviewable, Woodson, supra,
at 303, determinations of sentence.
Decades of back-and-forth between legislative experi
ment and judicial review have made it plain that the
constitutional demand for rationality goes beyond the
minimal requirement to replace unbounded discretion
with a sentencing structure; a State has much leeway in
devising such a structure and in selecting the terms for
measuring relative culpability, but a system must meet an
ultimate test of constitutional reliability in producing “ ‘a
——————
1 The majority views Walton v. Arizona, 497 U. S. 639 (1990), as having

decided this issue. But Walton is ambiguous on this point; while the
Court there approved Arizona’s practice of placing the burden on capital
defendants to prove, “by a preponderance of the evidence, the existence of
mitigating circumstances sufficiently substantial to call for leniency,” id.,
at 649 (plurality opinion), it did not quantify the phrase “sufficiently
substantial.” Justice Blackmun clearly thought otherwise, see id., at 687
(dissenting opinion), but he cried a greater foul than one can get from the
majority opinion. Stare decisis does not control this case.
 Cite as: 548 U. S. ____ (2006) 3

SOUTER, J., dissenting

reasoned moral response to the defendant’s background,
character, and crime,’” Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U. S. 302, 319
(1989) (quoting California v. Brown, 479 U. S. 538, 545
(1987) (O’Connor, J., concurring); emphasis deleted); cf.
Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U. S. 153, 206 (1976) (joint opinion of
Stewart, Powell, and STEVENS, JJ.) (sanctioning sentencing
procedures that “focus the jury’s attention on the particular
ized nature of the crime and the particularized characteris
tics of the individual defendant”). The Eighth Amendment,
that is, demands both form and substance, both a system
for decision and one geared to produce morally justifiable
results.
The State thinks its scheme is beyond questioning,
whether as to form or substance, for it sees the tie-breaker
law as equivalent to the provisions examined in Blystone v.
Pennsylvania, 494 U. S. 299 (1990), and Boyde v. California,
494 U. S. 370 (1990), where we approved statutes that
required a death sentence upon a jury finding that aggra
vating circumstances outweighed mitigating ones. But the
crucial fact in those systems was the predominance of the
aggravators, and our recognition of the moral rationality of
a mandatory capital sentence based on that finding is no
authority for giving States free rein to select a different
conclusion that will dictate death.
Instead, the constitutional demand for a reasoned moral
response requires the state statute to satisfy two criteria
that speak to the issue before us now, one governing the
character of sentencing evidence, and one going to the
substantive justification needed for a death sentence. As
to the first, there is an obligation in each case to inform
the jury’s choice of sentence with evidence about the crime
as actually committed and about the specific individual
who committed it. See Spaziano v. Florida, 468 U. S. 447,
460, and n. 7 (1984). Since the sentencing choice is, by
definition, the attribution of particular culpability to a
criminal act and defendant, as distinct from the general
4 KANSAS v. MARSH

SOUTER, J., dissenting

culpability necessarily implicated by committing a given
offense, see Penry, supra, at 327–328; Spaziano, supra, at
460; Zant v. Stephens, 462 U. S. 862, 879 (1983), the sen
tencing decision must turn on the uniqueness of the indi
vidual defendant and on the details of the crime, to which
any resulting choice of death must be “directly” related.
Penry, supra, at 319.
Second, there is the point to which the particulars of
crime and criminal are relevant: within the category of
capital crimes, the death penalty must be reserved for “the
worst of the worst.” See, e.g., Roper v. Simmons, 543 U. S.
551, 568 (2005) (“Capital punishment must be limited to
those offenders who commit ‘a narrow category of the most
serious crimes’ and whose extreme culpability makes them
‘the most deserving of execution’ ” (quoting Atkins v. Vir
ginia, 536 U. S. 304, 319 (2002))). One object of the struc
tured sentencing proceeding required in the aftermath of
Furman is to eliminate the risk that a death sentence will
be imposed in spite of facts calling for a lesser penalty,
Penry, supra, at 328–329, and the essence of the sentenc
ing authority’s responsibility is to determine whether the
response to the crime and defendant “must be death,”
Spaziano, supra, at 461; cf. Gregg, supra, at 184 (joint
opinion of Stewart, Powell, and STEVENS, JJ.). Of course,
in the moral world of those who reject capital punishment
in principle, a death sentence can never be a moral im
perative. The point, however, is that within our legal and
moral system, which allows a place for the death penalty,
“must be death” does not mean “may be death.”
Since a valid capital sentence thus requires a choice
based upon unique particulars identifying the crime and
its perpetrator as heinous to the point of demanding death
even within the class of potentially capital offenses, the
State’s provision for a tie breaker in favor of death fails on
both counts. The dispositive fact under the tie breaker is
not the details of the crime or the unique identity of the
 Cite as: 548 U. S. ____ (2006) 5

SOUTER, J., dissenting

individual defendant. The determining fact is not directly
linked to a particular crime or particular criminal at all;
the law operates merely on a jury’s finding of equipoise in
the State’s own selected considerations for and against
death. Nor does the tie breaker identify the worst of the
worst, or even purport to reflect any evidentiary showing
that death must be the reasoned moral response; it does
the opposite. The statute produces a death sentence ex
actly when a sentencing impasse demonstrates as a mat
ter of law that the jury does not see the evidence as show
ing the worst sort of crime committed by the worst sort of
criminal, in a combination heinous enough to demand
death. It operates, that is, when a jury has applied the
State’s chosen standards of culpability and mitigation and
reached nothing more than what the Supreme Court of
Kansas calls a “tie,” Kleypas, 272 Kan., at 1016, 40 P. 3d,
at 232 (internal quotation marks omitted). It mandates
death in what that court identifies as “doubtful cases,”
ibid. The statute thus addresses the risk of a morally
unjustifiable death sentence, not by minimizing it as
precedent unmistakably requires, but by guaranteeing
that in equipoise cases the risk will be realized, by “plac
ing a ‘thumb [on] death’s side of the scale,’ ” Sochor v.
Florida, 504 U. S. 527, 532 (1992) (quoting Stringer v.
Black, 503 U. S. 222, 232 (1992); alteration in original).
In Kansas, when a jury applies the State’s own stan
dards of relative culpability and cannot decide that a
defendant is among the most culpable, the state law says
that equivocal evidence is good enough and the defendant
must die. A law that requires execution when the case for
aggravation has failed to convince the sentencing jury is
morally absurd, and the Court’s holding that the Constitu
tion tolerates this moral irrationality defies decades of
precedent aimed at eliminating freakish capital sentenc
ing in the United States.
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SOUTER, J., dissenting

III

That precedent, demanding reasoned moral judgment,
developed in response to facts that could not be ignored,
the kaleidoscope of life and death verdicts that made no
sense in fact or morality in the random sentencing before
Furman was decided in 1972. See 408 U. S., at 309–310
(Stewart, J., concurring). Today, a new body of fact must
be accounted for in deciding what, in practical terms, the
Eighth Amendment guarantees should tolerate, for the
period starting in 1989 has seen repeated exonerations of
convicts under death sentences, in numbers never imag
ined before the development of DNA tests. We cannot face
up to these facts and still hold that the guarantee of mor
ally justifiable sentencing is hollow enough to allow
maximizing death sentences, by requiring them when
juries fail to find the worst degree of culpability: when, by
a State’s own standards and a State’s own characteriza
tion, the case for death is “doubtful.”
A few numbers from a growing literature will give a
sense of the reality that must be addressed. When the
Governor of Illinois imposed a moratorium on executions
in 2000, 13 prisoners under death sentences had been
released since 1977 after a number of them were shown to
be innocent, as described in a report which used their
examples to illustrate a theme common to all 13, of “rela
tively little solid evidence connecting the charged defen
dants to the crimes.” State of Illinois, G. Ryan, Governor,
Report of the Governor’s Commission on Capital Punish
ment: Recommendations Only 7 (Apr. 2002) (hereinafter
Report); see also id., at 5–6, 7–9. During the same period,
12 condemned convicts had been executed. Subsequently
the Governor determined that 4 more death row inmates
were innocent. See id., at 5–6; Warden, Illinois Death
Penalty Reform, 95 J. Crim. L. & C. 381, 382, and n. 6
 Cite as: 548 U. S. ____ (2006) 7

SOUTER, J., dissenting

(2005).2 Illinois had thus wrongly convicted and con
demned even more capital defendants than it had exe
cuted, but it may well not have been otherwise unique; one
recent study reports that between 1989 and 2003, 74
American prisoners condemned to death were exonerated,
Gross, Jacoby, Matheson, Montgomery, & Patil, Exonera
tions in the United States 1989 Through 2003, 95 J. Crim.
L. & C. 523, 531 (2006) (hereinafter Gross), many of them
——————
2 The Illinois Report emphasizes the difference between exoneration

of a convict because of actual innocence, and reversal of a judgment
because of legal error affecting conviction or sentence but not inconsis
tent with guilt in fact. See Report 9 (noting that, apart from the 13
released men, a “broader review” discloses that more than half of the
State’s death penalty cases “were reversed at some point in the proc
ess”). More importantly, it takes only a cursory reading of the Report
to recognize that it describes men released who were demonstrably
innocent or convicted on grossly unreliable evidence. Of one, the Report
notes “two other persons were subsequently convicted in Wisconsin of”
the murders. Id., at 8. Of two others, the Report states that they were
released after “DNA tests revealed that none of them were the source of
the semen found in the victim. That same year, two other men con
fessed to the crime, pleaded guilty and were sentenced to life in prison,
and a third was tried and convicted for the crime.” Ibid. Of yet an
other, the Report says that “another man subsequently confessed to the
crime for which [the released man] was convicted. He entered a plea of
guilty and is currently serving a prison term for that crime.” Id., at 9.
A number were subject to judgments as close to innocence as any
judgments courts normally render. In the case of one of the released
men, the Supreme Court of Illinois found the evidence insufficient to
support his conviction. See People v. Smith, 185 Ill. 2d 532, 708 N. E.
2d 365 (1999). Several others obtained acquittals, and still more simply
had the charges against them dropped, after receiving orders for new
trials.
At least 2 of the 13 were released at the initiative of the executive.
We can reasonably assume that a State under no obligation to do so
would not release into the public a person against whom it had a valid
conviction and sentence unless it were certain beyond all doubt that the
person in custody was not the perpetrator of the crime. The reason that
the State would forgo even a judicial forum in which defendants would
demonstrate grounds for vacating their convictions is a matter of
common sense: evidence going to innocence was conclusive.
8 KANSAS v. MARSH

SOUTER, J., dissenting

cleared by DNA evidence, ibid.3 Another report states
that “more than 110” death row prisoners have been re
leased since 1973 upon findings that they were innocent of
the crimes charged, and “[h]undreds of additional wrong
ful convictions in potentially capital cases have been docu
mented over the past century.” Lanier & Acker, Capital
Punishment, the Moratorium Movement, and Empirical
Questions, 10 Psychology, Public Policy & Law 577, 593
(2004). Most of these wrongful convictions and sentences
resulted from eyewitness misidentification, false confes
sion, and (most frequently) perjury, Gross 544, 551–552,
and the total shows that among all prosecutions homicide
cases suffer an unusually high incidence of false convic
tion, id., at 532, 552, probably owing to the combined
difficulty of investigating without help from the victim,
intense pressure to get convictions in homicide cases, and
the corresponding incentive for the guilty to frame the
——————
3 The authors state the criteria for their study: “As we use the term,

‘exoneration’ is an official act declaring a defendant not guilty of a
crime for which he or she had previously been convicted. The exonera
tions we have studied occurred in four ways: (1) In forty-two cases
governors (or other appropriate executive officers) issued pardons based
on evidence of the defendants’ innocence. (2) In 263 cases criminal
charges were dismissed by courts after new evidence of innocence
emerged, such as DNA. (3) In thirty-one cases the defendants were
acquitted at a retrial on the basis of evidence that they had no role in
the crimes for which they were originally convicted. (4) In four cases,
states posthumously acknowledged the innocence of defendants who
had already died in prison . . . .” Gross 524 (footnote omitted). The
authors exclude from their list of exonerations “any case in which a
dismissal or an acquittal appears to have been based on a decision that
while the defendant was not guilty of the charges in the original convic
tion, he did play a role in the crime and may be guilty of some lesser
crime that is based on the same conduct. For our purposes, a defendant
who is acquitted of murder on retrial, but convicted of involuntary
manslaughter, has not been exonerated. We have also excluded any
case in which a dismissal was entered in the absence of strong evidence
of factual innocence, or in which—despite such evidence—there was
unexplained physical evidence of the defendant’s guilt.” Ibid., n. 4.
 Cite as: 548 U. S. ____ (2006) 9

SOUTER, J., dissenting

innocent, id., at 532.
We are thus in a period of new empirical argument
about how “death is different,” Gregg, 428 U. S., at 188
(joint opinion of Stewart, Powell, and STEVENS, JJ.): not
only would these false verdicts defy correction after the
fatal moment, the Illinois experience shows them to be
remarkable in number, and they are probably dispropor
tionately high in capital cases. While it is far too soon for
any generalization about the soundness of capital sentenc
ing across the country, the cautionary lesson of recent
experience addresses the tie-breaking potential of the
Kansas statute: the same risks of falsity that infect proof
of guilt raise questions about sentences, when the circum
stances of the crime are aggravating factors and bear on
predictions of future dangerousness.
In the face of evidence of the hazards of capital prosecu
tion, maintaining a sentencing system mandating death
when the sentencer finds the evidence pro and con to be in
equipoise is obtuse by any moral or social measure. And
unless application of the Eighth Amendment no longer
calls for reasoned moral judgment in substance as well as
form, the Kansas law is unconstitutional.