Johnson v. Texas

For the second time this Term, we consider a constitutional challenge to the former Texas capital sentencing system. Like the condemned prisoner in Graham v. Collins, 506 U. S. 461 (1993), the petitioner here claims that the Texas special issues system in effect until 1991 did not allow his jury to give adequate mitigating effect to evidence of his youth. Graham was a federal habeas corpus proceeding where the petitioner had to confront the rule of Teague v. Lane, 489 U. S. 288 (1989), barring the application of new rules of law on federal habeas corpus. In part because the relief sought by…