2004 term per curiam opinions of the Supreme Court of the United States

Because per curiam decisions are issued from the Court as an institution, these opinions all lack the attribution of authorship or joining votes to specific justices.

The state court upheld a death sentence over the defendant's argument that the jury instructions prevented the full consideration of his mitigation evidence.

Stevens filed a dissent, arguing that the officer's conduct was objectively unreasonable because deadly force should not have been used to prevent the suspect's escape.

He also believed that the immunity issue should have been decided by a jury, and that the Court should have held full briefing and argument on the case.

The petitioner argued that the Mississippi courts violated his Eighth Amendment rights by refusing to require a jury instruction about a lesser included offense in his capital case.

The Supreme Court had previously addressed the case in Bell v. Cone, 535 U.S. 685 (2002) on the issue of the habeas petitioner's ineffective assistance of counsel claim.

On remand, the Court of Appeals now ruled that the aggravator language applied to the petitioner's capital sentencing was too vague to prevent the death penalty from being imposed arbitrarily, and that the Tennessee Supreme Court had failed to cure that defect on review by applying a narrowing construction to the language.

Ginsburg urged that, had the state court failed to address an argument, that there would be no grounds for assuming that it had nevertheless sub silentio decided that issue on the merits instead of merely overlooking it.

O'Connor preferred to remand the case with instructions to consider whether the decision of the ICJ was binding on American courts, and to what extent the Convention created enforceable rights that could not be forfeited through procedural default.