State v. Zuniga

EXUM, Chief Justice.

The question in this case is whether McKoy v. North Carolina, 494 U.S. 433, 108 L. Ed. 2d 369 (1990), which invalidated the then-existing unanimity requirement of our capital sentencing scheme, should be applied retroactively to capital cases which, like defendant’s, became final before McKoy was decided. Adopting the retroactivity standard announced in Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288, 103 L. Ed. 2d 334 (1989), we hold that McKoy must be applied retroactively to such cases. Because defendant was sentenced to death under jury instructions violative of McKoy, and because the…