Brown v. Payton

The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, convening en banc, granted habeas relief to respondent William Payton. It held that the jury instructions in the penalty phase of his trial for capital murder did not permit consideration of all the mitigation evidence Payton presented. The error, the court determined, was that the general mitigation instruction did not make it clear to the jury that it could consider evidence concerning Payton’s post-crime religious conversion and the prosecutor was allowed *136to urge this erroneous interpretation. We granted the petition for certiorari,…