Opinion of the Court

THOMAS, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which REHNQUIST, C. J., and O'CONNOR, SCALIA, and KENNEDY, JJ., joined. STEVENS, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which SOUTER, GINSBURG, and BREYER, JJ., joined, post, p. 168.

Robert S. Smith, by appointment of the Court, 520 U. S. 1114, argued the cause for petitioner. With him on the briefs were Alan Effron and Michele J. Brace.

Katherine P. Baldwin, Assistant Attorney General of Virginia, argued the cause for respondents. With her on the brief were James S. Gilmore III, Attorney General, and David E. Anderson, Chief Deputy Attorney General.

JUSTICE THOMAS delivered the opinion of the Court.

This case presents the question whether the rule set out in Simmons v. South Carolina, 512 U. S. 154 (1994)—which requires that a capital defendant be permitted to inform his sentencing jury that he is parole ineligible if the prosecution argues that he presents a future danger-was "new" within the meaning of Teague v. Lane, 489 U. S. 288 (1989), and thereby inapplicable to an already final death sentence. We conclude that it was new, and that it cannot, therefore, be used to disturb petitioner's death sentence, which had been final for six years when Simmons was decided.

I

Helen Schartner was last seen alive late in the evening of February 5, 1985, leaving the County Line Lounge in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Her lifeless body was discovered the next day, in a muddy field across a highway from the lounge. Schartner's head had been laid open by several blows with the barrel of a handgun, and she had been strangled with such violence that bones in her neck were broken and finger imprints were left on her skin. An abundance of physical evidence linked petitioner to the crime scene and crimeamong other things, tire tracks near Schartner's body were consistent with petitioner's car, and bodily fluids recovered

Opinion of the Court

from Schartner's body matched petitioner. He was indicted on counts of capital murder, rape, sodomy, and abduction (which count was later dismissed).

After a jury trial, petitioner was found guilty on the murder, rape, and sodomy counts. During the subsequent sentencing hearing, the prosecution sought to establish two aggravating factors: that petitioner presented a future danger, and that the murder had been "wanton, vile or inhuman." Evidence was presented that, prior to Schartner's murder, petitioner had been convicted of a host of other offenses, including the kidnaping and assault of another woman while he was on parole, and the murder of a fellow inmate during an earlier prison stint. Petitioner sought a jury instruction explaining that he was not eligible for parole if sentenced to life in prison. The trial judge denied petitioner's request. After the sentencing hearing, the jury found beyond a reasonable doubt that petitioner "would constitute a continuous serious threat to society" and that "his conduct in committing the offense was outrageously wanton, vile or inhuman." 46 Record 208. The jury recommended that petitioner be sentenced to death.1 The trial judge adopted the jury's recommendation and sentenced petitioner to 40 years' imprisonment each for the rape and sodomy convictions, and to death by electrocution for Schartner's murder. Petitioner appealed to the Supreme Court of Virginia, which affirmed both the conviction and the sentence. O'Dell v. Commonwealth, 234 Va. 672, 364 S. E. 2d 491 (1988). We denied certiorari. O'Dell v. Virginia, 488 U. S. 871 (1988). Petitioner's efforts at state habeas relief were unsuccessful, and we again denied certiorari. O'Dell v. Thompson, 502 U. S. 995 (1991).

1 The Virginia Supreme Court concluded that the jury's recommendation of a death sentence was based only on the first aggravating factor-petitioner's future dangerousness. O'Dell v. Commonwealth, 234 Va. 672, 706, 364 S. E. 2d 491, 510 (1988). Only that aggravating factor is before

us.

Opinion of the Court

Petitioner then filed a federal habeas claim. He contended, inter alia, that newly obtained DNA evidence established that he was actually innocent, and that his death sentence was faulty because he had been prevented from informing the jury of his ineligibility for parole. The District Court rejected petitioner's claim of innocence. O'Dell v. Thompson, Civ. Action No. 3:92CV480 (ED Va., Sept. 6, 1994), App. 171-172. But it agreed with petitioner that he was entitled to resentencing under the intervening decision in Simmons v. South Carolina, supra. The District Court described Simmons as holding that "where the defendant's future dangerousness is at issue, and state law prohibits the defendant's release on parole, the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires that the sentencing jury be informed that the defendant is not eligible for parole." App. 198. The court concluded that the Simmons rule was not new and thus was available to petitioner. Because the prosecutor "obviously used O'Dell's prior releases on crossexamination, and in his closing argument, to argue that the defendant presented a future danger to society," App. 201 (citations omitted), the District Court held that petitioner was entitled to be resentenced if it could be demonstrated that he was in fact ineligible for parole.

A divided en banc Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reversed. 95 F. 3d 1214 (1996). After an exhaustive review of our precedents, the Court of Appeals majority determined that "Simmons was the paradigmatic 'new rule,'” id., at 1218, and, as such, could not aid petitioner. The Fourth Circuit was closely divided as to whether Simmons set forth a new rule, but every member of the court agreed that petitioner's "claim of actual innocence [was] not even colorable." 95 F. 3d, at 1218; see also id., at 1255–1256 (Ervin, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). We declined review on petitioner's claim of actual innocence, but granted certiorari to determine whether the rule of Simmons was new.

519

Opinion of the Court

U. S. 1050 (1996); see also ibid. (SCALIA, J., respecting the grant of certiorari).

II

Before a state prisoner may upset his state conviction or sentence on federal collateral review, he must demonstrate as a threshold matter that the court-made rule of which he seeks the benefit is not "new." We have stated variously the formula for determining when a rule is new. See, e. g., Graham v. Collins, 506 U. S. 461, 467 (1993) ("A holding constitutes a 'new rule' within the meaning of Teague if it 'breaks new ground,' 'imposes a new obligation on the States or the Federal Government,' or was not 'dictated by precedent existing at the time the defendant's conviction became final'") (quoting Teague, 489 U. S., at 301) (emphasis in original). At bottom, however, the Teague doctrine "validates reasonable, good-faith interpretations of existing precedents made by state courts even though they are shown to be contrary to later decisions." Butler v. McKellar, 494 U. S. 407, 414 (1990) (citation omitted). "Reasonableness, in this as in many other contexts, is an objective standard." Stringer v. Black, 503 U. S. 222, 237 (1992). Accordingly, we will not disturb a final state conviction or sentence unless it can be said that a state court, at the time the conviction or sentence became final, would have acted objectively unreasonably by not extending the relief later sought in federal court.

The Teague inquiry is conducted in three steps. First, the date on which the defendant's conviction became final is determined. Lambrix v. Singletary, 520 U. S. 518, 527 (1997). Next, the habeas court considers whether "a state court considering [the defendant's] claim at the time his conviction became final would have felt compelled by existing precedent to conclude that the rule [he] seeks was required by the Constitution.' Ibid. (quoting Saffle v. Parks, 494 U. S. 484, 488 (1990)) (alterations in Lambrix). If not, then the rule is new. If the rule is determined to be new, the final step in the Teague analysis requires the court to determine whether

Opinion of the Court

the rule nonetheless falls within one of the two narrow exceptions to the Teague doctrine. 520 U. S., at 527. The first, limited exception is for new rules “forbidding criminal punishment of certain primary conduct [and] rules prohibiting a certain category of punishment for a class of defendants because of their status or offense." Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U. S. 302, 330 (1989). The second, even more circumscribed, exception permits retroactive application of "watershed rules of criminal procedure implicating the fundamental fairness and accuracy of the criminal proceeding." Graham, supra, at 478 (quoting Teague, supra, at 311) (internal quotation marks omitted). "Whatever the precise scope of this [second] exception, it is clearly meant to apply only to a small core of rules requiring observance of those procedures that are implicit in the concept of ordered liberty." Graham, supra, at 478 (internal quotation marks omitted).

III

Petitioner's conviction became final on October 3, 1988, when we declined to review the Virginia Supreme Court's decision affirming his sentence on direct review. Simmons, the rule of which petitioner now seeks to avail himself, was decided in 1994.

In Simmons, the defendant had been found guilty of capital murder for the brutal killing of an elderly woman. The defendant had also assaulted other elderly women, resulting in convictions that rendered him—at least as of the time he was sentenced-ineligible for parole. Prosecutors in South Carolina are permitted to argue to sentencing juries that defendants' future dangerousness is an appropriate consideration in determining whether to affix a sentence of death. 512 U. S., at 162-163 (plurality opinion). Simmons sought to rebut the prosecution's “generalized argument of future dangerousness" by presenting the jury with evidence that "his dangerousness was limited to elderly women," none of whom he was likely to encounter in prison. Id., at 157.