A capital sentencing procedure that required the jury to return a death sentence if even a single juror supported that outcome would be the " ' "height of arbitrariness." ' " Ante, at 13 (opinion of the Court). The use of such a procedure is unquestionably unconstitutional today, and I believe it was equally so in 1987 when respondent's death sentence became final. The Court reaches a different conclusion because it reads Mills v. Maryland, 486 U. S. 367 (1988), to announce a "new rule" of criminal procedure that may not be applied on federal habeas review to defendants whose convictions became final before Mills was decided. Ante, at 1. In my opinion, however, Mills simply represented a straightforward application of our longstanding view that "the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments cannot tolerate the infliction of a sentence of death under [a] legal syste[m] that permit[s] this unique penalty to be ... wantonly and ... freakishly imposed." Furman v. Georgia, 408 U. S. 238, 310 (1972) (per curiam) (Stewart, J., concurring). Polygraph, Lie Detector Police Jobs Cheating Wife Internet Job Search Pitching Police Officer Police Academy Home Builder Start A Daycare

The dispute in Mills concerned jury instructions and a verdict form that the majority read to create a "substantial probability that reasonable jurors . . . well may have thought they were precluded from considering any mitigating evidence unless all 12 jurors agreed on the existence of a particular such circumstance. " 486 U. S., at 384. The resulting unanimity requirement, the majority concluded, violated the Constitution in that it "allow[ed] a 'holdout' juror to prevent the other jurors from considering mitigating evidence." McKoy v. North Carolina, 494 U. S. 433, 438 (1990) (quoting Mills, 486 U. S., at 375). When Mills was decided, there was nothing novel about acknowledging that permitting one death-prone juror to control the entire jury's sentencing decision would be arbitrary. That acknowledgment was a natural outgrowth of our cases condemning mandatory imposition of the death penalty, Roberts v. Louisiana, 431 U. S. 633 (1977) (per curiam); Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U. S. 280 (1976) (plurality opinion), recognizing that arbitrary imposition of that penalty violates the Eighth Amendment,1 e.g., Zant v. Stephens, 462 U. S. 862, 874 (1983); Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U. S. 153, 189 (1976); Furman, supra; and mandating procedures that guarantee full consideration of mitigating evidence, e.g., Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 U. S. 104 (1982); Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U. S. 586 (1978) (plurality opinion). Indeed, in my judgment, the kind of arbitrariness that would enable 1 vote in favor of death to outweigh 11 in favor of forbearance would violate the bedrock fairness principles that have governed our trial proceedings for centuries. Rejecting such a manifestly unfair procedural innovation does not announce a "new rule" covered by Teague v. Lane, 489 U. S. 288, 301-302 (1989), but simply affirms that our fairness principles do not permit blatant exceptions.2

This leaves only the question whether reasonable jurors could have read Pennsylvania's jury instructions and verdict form to impose a unanimity requirement with respect to mitigating circumstances. For the reasons identified by the Third Circuit, Banks v. Horn, 271 F. 3d 527, 543-551 (2001); see also Banks v. Horn, 316 F. 3d 228, 247 (2003) (leaving in place the relevant portions of the court's earlier opinion), particularly with respect to the verdict form, 271 F. 3d, at 549-550, I answer this question in the affirmative.

I would affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.