# Dawson v. Delaware > Supreme Court of the United States · March 9, 1992 · 503 U.S. 159 URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9432485 ## Case - **Full name:** Dawson v. Delaware - **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States - **Decided:** March 9, 1992 - **Citations:** 503 U.S. 159; 112 S. Ct. 1093; 117 L. Ed. 2d 309; 1992 U.S. LEXIS 1536 - **Precedential status:** Published - **Opinion:** Concurrence by Blackmun - **Judges:** Rehnquist, White, Blackmun, Stevens, O'Connor, Scalia, Kennedy, Souter, Thomas - **Cited by:** 480 later opinions in the Frix Law Library ## Citator (automated) - No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases. - Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9432485 ## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction) - holding that the introduction of evidence of defendant’s membership in the Aryan Brotherhood violated the First Amendment because it was “totally without relevance to [the] sentencing proceeding” while noting that “[i]n many cases, . . . associational evidence might serve a le… - holding that “the First and Fourteenth Amendments prohibit[ed] the introduction in a capital sentencing proceeding of the [irrelevant] - 52 - fact that the defendant was a member of an organization called the Aryan Brotherhood,” and noting that the wrongful admission of the ev… - holding that evidence of a defendant’s membership in a white racist prison gang, as well as evidence of the gang’s propensity for violence and racism, was not admissible during the punishment phase of the defendant’s trial, where his membership was not relevant to the offense … - stating that where both parties stipulated to the defendant’s membership in the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang, but the prosecution offered no evidence of the gang’s violent tendencies relevant to sentencing, the use of that associational evidence violated the defendant’s First… - holding that the “First Amendment rights” of a defendant, who had convicted of murder, “were violated by the admission [in the sentencing phase] of [evidence of his membership in] the Aryan Brotherhood ... because the evidence proved nothing more than [the defendant’s] abstrac… ## Opinion text Justice Blackmun, concurring. I join the Court’s opinion, but write separately to note my understanding that the Court, by the penultimate paragraph of its opinion, ante, at 168-169, does not require application of harmless-error review on remand. This Court previously has declined to apply harmless-error analysis to certain categories of constitutional error. See, e. g., Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U. S. 79, 100 (1986) (racial discrimination in the selection of a petit jury); Vasquez v. Hillery, 474 U. S. 254, 261-262 (1986) (racial discrimination in the selection of a grand jury); Waller v. Georgia, 467 U. S. 39, 49-50 , and n. 9 (1984) (right to a public trial); Tumey v. Ohio, 273 U. S. 510, 535 (1927) (trial before an impartial judge). Because of the potential chilling effect that consideration of First Amendment activity at sentencing might have, there is a substantial argument that harmless-error analysis is not appropriate for the type of error before us today. See Rose v. Clark, 478 U. S. 570, 587 (1986) (Stevens, J., concurring in judgment) (“[Violations of certain constitutional rights are not, and should not be, subject to harmless-error analysis because those rights protect important values that are unrelated to the truth-seeking function of the trial”). The parties did not address this issue, and it is better left for the Supreme Court of Delaware on remand. --- Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9432485. Public record. Not legal advice.