Justice O’Connor, concurring.

I write separately to put to rest one concern. The dissent worries that the Court’s opinion “imposes on defense counsel a rigid requirement to review all documents in what it calls the ‘case file’ of any prior conviction that the prosecution might rely on at trial.” Post, at 1 (opinion of Kennedy, J.). But the Court’s opinion imposes no such rule. See ante, at 14. Rather, today’s decision simply applies our longstanding case-by-case approach to determining whether an attorney’s performance was unconstitutionally deficient under Strickland v. Washington, 466 U. S. 668 (1984). Trial counsel’s performance in Rompilla’s case falls short under that standard, because the attorneys’ behavior was not “reasonable considering all the circumstances.” Id., at 688. In particular, there were three circumstances which made the attorneys’ failure to examine Rompilla’s prior conviction file unreasonable.

First, Rompilla’s attorneys knew that their client’s prior conviction would be at the very heart of the prosecution’s case. The prior conviction went not to a collateral matter, but rather to one of the aggravating circumstances making Rompilla eligible for the death penalty. The prosecutors intended not merely to mention the fact of prior conviction, but to read testimony about the details of the crime. That crime, besides being quite violent in its own right, was very similar to the murder for which Rompilla was on trial, and Rompilla had committed the murder at issue a mere three months after his release from prison on the earlier conviction. In other words, the prosecutor clearly planned to use details of the prior crime as powerful evidence that Rompilla was a dangerous man for whom the death penalty would be both appropriate punishment and a necessary means of incapacitation. Cf. App. 165–166 (prosecutor’s penalty-phase argument). This was evidence the defense should have been prepared to meet: A reasonable defense lawyer would have attached a high importance to obtaining the record of the prior trial, in order to anticipate and find ways of deflecting the prosecutor’s aggravation argument.

Second, the prosecutor’s planned use of the prior conviction threatened to eviscerate one of the defense’s primary mitigation arguments. Rompilla was convicted on the basis of strong circumstantial evidence. His lawyers structured the entire mitigation argument around the hope of convincing the jury that residual doubt about Rompilla’s guilt made it inappropriate to impose the death penalty. In announcing an intention to introduce testimony about Rompilla’s similar prior offense, the prosecutor put Rompilla’s attorneys on notice that the prospective defense on mitigation likely would be ineffective and counterproductive. The similarities between the two crimes, combined with the timing and the already strong circumstantial evidence, raised a strong likelihood that the jury would reject Rompilla’s residual doubt argument. Rompilla’s attorneys’ reliance on this transparently weak argument risked damaging their credibility. Such a scenario called for further investigation, to determine whether circumstances of the prior case gave any hope of saving the residual doubt argument, or whether the best strategy instead would be to jettison that argument so as to focus on other, more promising issues. Cf. Yarborough v. Gentry, 540 U. S. 1, 7 (2003) (per curiam); Bell v. Cone, 535 U. S. 685, 700 (2002) (noting that sound tactical judgment may sometimes call for omitting certain defense evidence or arguments).

Third, the attorneys’ decision not to obtain Rompilla’s prior conviction file was not the result of an informed tactical decision about how the lawyers’ time would best be spent. Although Rompilla’s attorneys had ample warning that the details of Rompilla’s prior conviction would be critical to their case, their failure to obtain that file would not necessarily have been deficient if it had resulted from the lawyers’ careful exercise of judgment about how best to marshal their time and serve their client. But Rompilla’s attorneys did not ignore the prior case file in order to spend their time on other crucial leads. They did not determine that the file was so inaccessible or so large that examining it would necessarily divert them from other trial-preparation tasks they thought more promising. They did not learn at the 11th hour about the prosecution’s intent to use the prior conviction, when it was too late for them to change plans. Rather, their failure to obtain the crucial file “was the result of inattention, not reasoned strategic judgment.” Wiggins v. Smith, 539 U. S. 510, 534 (2003). As a result, their conduct fell below constitutionally required standards. See id., at 533 (“ ‘[S]trategic choices made after less than complete investigation are reasonable’ only to the extent that ‘reasonable professional judgments support the limitations on investigation’ ” (quoting Strickland, 466 U. S., at 690–691)).

In the particular circumstances of this case, the attorneys’ failure to obtain and review the case file from their client’s prior conviction did not meet standards of “reasonable professional judgmen[t].” Id., at 691. Because the Court’s opinion is consistent with the “ ‘case-by-case examination of the evidence’ ” called for under our cases, Williams v. Taylor, 529 U. S. 362, 391 (2000), I join the opinion.

JUSTICE O’CONNOR, concurring.

The Court today, relying in part on my opinion in Caldwell v. Mississippi, 472 U. S. 320, 341 (1985), rejects petitioner’s claim that the introduction of evidence of a prior death sentence impermissibly undermined the jury’s sense of responsibility. I write separately to explain why in my view petitioner’s Caldwell claim fails. The inaccuracy of the prosecutor’s argument in Caldwell was essential to my conclusion that the argument was unconstitutional. See id., at 342 (“[T]he prosecutor’s remarks were impermissible because they were inaccurate and misleading in a manner that diminished the jury’s sense of responsibility”). An accurate description of the jury’s role-even one that lessened the jury’s sense of responsibility-would have been constitutional. Ibid. (“[A] misleading picture of the jury’s role is not sanctioned by [California v. Ramos, 463 U. S. 992 (1983),] [b]ut neither does Ramos suggest that the Federal Constitution prohibits the giving of accurate instructions regarding postsentencing procedures”).

Accordingly, I believe that petitioner’s Caldwell claim fails because the evidence here was accurate at the time it was admitted. Petitioner’s sentencing jury was told that he had been sentenced to death-and indeed he had been. Introducing that evidence is no different than providing the jury with an accurate description of a State’s appellate review process. Both may (though we can never know for sure) lessen the jury’s sense of responsibility,

JUSTICE O’CONNOR, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.

Last Term, in Thompson v. Oklahoma, 487 U. S. 815, 487 U. S. 857 -858 (1988) (opinion concurring in judgment), I expressed the view that a criminal defendant who would have been tried as a juvenile under state law, but for the granting of a petition waiving juvenile court jurisdiction, may only be executed for a capital offense if the State’s capital punishment statute specifies a minimum age at which the commission of a capital crime can lead to an offender’s execution and the defendant had reached that minimum age at the time the crime was committed. As a threshold matter, I indicated that such specificity is not necessary to avoid constitutional problems if it is clear that no national consensus forbids the imposition of capital punishment for crimes committed at such an age. Id. at 487 U. S. 857. Applying this two-part standard in Thompson, I concluded that Oklahoma’s imposition of a death sentence on an individual who was 15 years old at the time he committed a capital offense should be set aside. Applying the same standard today, I conclude that the death sentences for capital murder imposed by Missouri and Kentucky on petitioners Wilkins and Stanford respectively should not be set aside, because it is sufficiently clear that no national consensus forbids the imposition of capital punishment on 16or 17-year-old capital murderers.

In Thompson, I noted that

[t]he most salient statistic that bears on this