Beard v. Banks

In Mills v. Maryland, 486 U. S. 867 (1988), and McKoy v. North Carolina, 494 U. S. 433 (1990), this Court held invalid capital sentencing schemes that require juries to disregard mitigating factors not found unanimously. In this case, we must determine whether the rule announced , in Mills and McKoy can be applied on federal habeas corpus review to a defendant whose conviction became final in 1987. Under our retroactivity analysis as set forth in Teague v. Lane, 489 U. S. 288 (1989), federal habeas corpus petitioners may not avail themselves of new rules of criminal procedure outside two…