KANSAS, PETITIONER v. JONATHAN D. CARR
KANSAS, PETITIONER v. REGINALD DEXTER CARR, JR
KANSAS, PETITIONER v. SIDNEY J. GLEASON
Supreme Court of the United States, Scalia, Filed Jan. 20, 2016,
8th Amendment – Mitigation – Jurors need not be instructed that mitigating circumstances “need not be proved beyond a reasonable doubt.”

(Dissent – Sotomayor – because the USSC “often” declines to grant cert where “a state court has wrongly decided an important question of federal law”, this should have been denied. The dissent doesn’t disagree with the court’s actual constitutional holdings, making it an unusual dissent)

A complete horror story culminating in:

Spotting a house with white Christmas lights in the distance, Holly started running toward it for help—naked,
skull shattered, and without shoes, through the snow and over barbed-wire fences.

Other than Justice Sotomayor’s nunc pro tunc dissent from the original grant of cert and the disgusting facts, there’s not actually much to this opinion.

Mitigation – Whether mitigation exists “is largely a judgment call (or perhaps a value call); what one juror might consider mitigating another might not. And of course the ultimate question whether mitigating circumstances outweigh aggravating circumstances is mostly a question of mercy…”

Mitigation – The USSC has never held that the State must direct juries to consider mitigating evidence in a particular manner

Capital Punishment – Due Process – Sentencing – Evidence improperly admitted may be a due process violation only where the evidence “so infected the sentencing proceeding with unfairness as to render the jury’s imposition of the death penalty a denial of due process.”