![]() ![]() JUSTICE STEVENS, concluded, in Part III, that the limited range of mitigating circumstances that may be considered by the sentencer under the Ohio death penalty statute is incompatible with the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. The court's construction was consistent with both prior Ohio law and the statute's legislative history. Petitioner's contention that the Ohio Supreme Court's interpretation of the complicity provision of the statute under which she was convicted was so unexpected that it deprived her of fair warning of the crime with which she was charged, is without merit. 484 did not violate petitioner's Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment rights under the principles of Witherspoon v. ![]() "follow conscientiously" the trial judge's instructions, Boulden v. The exclusion from the venire of four prospective jurors who made it "unmistakably clear" that, because of their opposition to the death penalty, they could not be trusted to "abide by existing law" and to The prosecutor's closing references to the State's evidence as "unrefuted" and "uncontradicted" (no evidence having been introduced to rebut the prosecutor's case after petitioner decided not to testify) did not violate the constitutional prohibitions against commenting on an accused's failure to testify, where petitioner's counsel had already focused the jury's attention on her silence by promising a defense and telling the jury that she would testify. THE CHIEF JUSTICE delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to Parts I and II, concluding:ฤก. ![]() Held: The judgment is reversed insofar as it upheld the death penalty, and the case is remanded. Petitioner, whose conviction of aggravated murder with specifications that it was committed to escape apprehension for, and while committing or attempting to commit, aggravated robbery, and whose sentence to death were affirmed by the Ohio Supreme Court, makes various challenges to the validity of her conviction, and attacks the constitutionality of the death penalty statute on the ground, inter alia, that it does not give the sentencing judge a full opportunity to consider mitigating circumstances in capital cases as required by the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. The Ohio death penalty statute provides that once a defendant is found guilty of aggravated murder with at least one of seven specified aggravating circumstances, the death penalty must be imposed unless, considering "the nature and circumstances of the offense and the history, character, and condition of the offender," the sentencing judge determines that at least one of the following circumstances is established by a preponderance of the evidence: (1) the victim induced or facilitated the offense (2) it is unlikely that the offense would have been committed but for the fact that the offender was under duress, coercion, or strong provocation or (3) the offense was primarily the product of the offender's psychosis or mental deficiency. ![]()
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