Florida’s death-penalty statutory scheme, under which judge must find aggravating circumstance justifying death and jury’s sentencing recommendation of death or life without parole is only advisory, violates Sixth Amendment jury right.

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Use of the sedative midazolam for lethal injections does not violate the Eighth Amendment, despite claims that it cannot reliably render an inmate unconscious before administering the lethal drugs.

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Plurality opinion concludes that, if an individual not in custody is voluntarily answering police questions and refuses or fails to answer an incriminating question, he must expressly invoke his privilege against self-incrimination when the question is asked in order to object at trial that the state’s characterizing his silence as evidence of guilt violates the privilege; opinion does not resolve whether at trial the state can use the silence as evidence of guilt if the defendant properly invokes the Fifth Amendment during the questioning.

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“[A]ny fact that increases the mandatory minimum [sentence] is an ‘element’ that must be submitted to the jury.”

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Plurality opinion on whether Confrontation Clause permits the prosecution to introduce an analyst’s forensic report through an expert witness; plurality holds in this case Clause did not preclude an expert’s testimony that defendant’s DNA profile matched a vaginal swab semen DNA profile produced by a Cellmark analyst who did not testify.

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