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                       SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

                                    --------
                                   No. 96-5658
                                    --------
          CARY MICHAEL LAMBRIX, PETITIONER v. HARRY K. SINGLETARY, JR.,
                                          ___
                  SECRETARY, FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS

       ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE
                                ELEVENTH CIRCUIT

                                 [May 12, 1997]

  JUSTICE SCALIA delivered the opinion of the Court.

  We granted certiorari in this case to consider whether a prisoner whose
conviction became final before our decision in Espinosa v. Florida, 505 U. S.
                                               ________    ________
1079 (1992), is foreclosed from relying on that decision in a federal habeas
corpus proceeding because it announced a "new rule" as defined in Teague v.
                                                                  ______
Lane, 489 U. S. 288 (1989).
_____
                                        I

  On February 5, 1983, Cary Michael Lambrix and his girlfriend, Francis Smith,
met Clarence Moore and Aleisha Bryant at a local tavern.  The two couples
returned to Lambrix's trailer for dinner, where Lambrix killed Moore and Bryant
in brutal fashion.  Lambrix was convicted on two counts of first-degree murder. 
In the sentencing phase of trial, the jury rendered an advisory verdict
recommending that the trial court sentence Lambrix to death on both counts.  The
trial court, after finding five aggravating circumstances in connection with the
murder of Moore, four aggravating circumstances in connection with the murder of
Bryant, and no mitigating circumstances as to either murder, sentenced Lambrix
to death on both counts.  Lambrix's conviction and sentence were upheld on
direct appeal by the

                                96-5658 - OPINION

2                             LAMBRIX v. SINGLETARY
                                     ____

Florida Supreme Court.  Lambrix v. State, 494 So. 2d 1143 (1986).
                        _______    ______
  After the Florida courts denied his repeated efforts to obtain collateral
relief, Lambrix v. Dugger, 529 So. 2d 1110 (Fla. 1988); Lambrix v. State, 534
        _______    _______                              _______    ______
So. 2d 1151 (Fla. 1988); Lambrix v. State, 559 So. 2d 1137 (Fla. 1990), Lambrix
                         _______    ______
filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U. S. C. S2254 in
the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida; that
court rejected all of his claims.  While Lambrix's appeal was pending before the
Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, this Court decided Espinosa v.
                                                              ________
Florida, 505 U. S. 1079 (1992), which held that if the sentencing judge in a
________
"weighing" State (i.e., a State that requires specified aggravating
                  ____
circumstances to be weighed against any mitigating circumstances at the
sentencing phase of a capital trial) is required to give deference to a jury's
advisory sentencing recommendation, then neither the jury nor the judge is
constitutionally permitted to weigh invalid aggravating circumstances.  Since
Florida is such a State, and since one of Lambrix's claims was that his
sentencing jury was improperly instructed on the "especially heinous, atrocious,
or cruel" (HAC) aggravator, Espinosa had obvious relevance to his habeas
                            ________
petition.  Rather than address this issue in the first instance, however, the
Eleventh Circuit held its proceedings in abeyance to permit Lambrix to present
his Espinosa claim to the Florida state courts.
    ________
  The Florida Supreme Court rejected Lambrix's Espinosa claim without
                                               ________
considering its merits on the ground that the claim was procedurally barred. 
Lambrix v. Singletary, 641 So. 2d 847 (1994).  That court explained that
_______    ___________
although Lambrix had properly preserved his Espinosa objection at trial by
                                            ________
requesting a limiting instruction on the HAC aggravator, he had failed to raise
the issue on direct appeal.  641 So. 2d, at 848.  The Florida Supreme Court also
rejected Lambrix's claim

                                96-5658 - OPINION

                              LAMBRIX v. SINGLETARY                            3
                                     ____

that the procedural bar should be excused because his appellate counsel was
ineffective in failing to raise the forfeited issue, explaining that this claim
was itself procedurally barred and was, in any event, meritless.  Id., at
                                                                  ___
848-849.
  After the Florida Supreme Court entered judgment against Lambrix, the Eleventh
Circuit adjudicated his habeas petition.  Without even acknowledging the
procedural bar - which was expressly raised and argued by the State - the Court
of Appeals proceeded to address the Espinosa claim, and determined that Espinosa
                                    ________                            ________
announced a new rule which cannot be applied retroactively on federal habeas
under Teague v. Lane, 489 U. S. 288 (1989).  72 F. 3d 1500, 1503 (1996).  We
      ______    _____
granted certiorari.  519 U. S. ___ (1996).
                                       II
  Before turning to the question presented in this case, we pause to consider
the State's contention that Lambrix's Espinosa claim is procedurally barred
                                      ________
because he failed to contend that the jury was instructed with a vague HAC
aggravator on his direct appeal to the Florida Supreme Court.  According to the
State, the Florida Supreme Court "has consistently required that an Espinosa
                                                                    ________
issue must have been objected to at trial and pursued on direct appeal in order
to be reviewed in postconviction proceedings."  Brief for Respondent 30, citing
Chandler v. Dugger, 634 So. 2d 1066, 1069 (Fla. 1994), Jackson v. Dugger, 633
________    _______                                    _______    _______
So. 2d 1051, 1055 (Fla. 1993), and Henderson v. Singletary, 617 So. 2d 313
                                   _________    ___________
(Fla.), cert. denied, 507 U. S. 1047 (1993).
  In Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U. S. 722, 729 (1991), we reaffirmed that this
     _______    _________
Court "will not review a question of federal law decided by a state court if the
decision of that court rests on a state law ground that is independent of the
federal question and adequate to support the judgment."  See also Harris v.
                                                                  ______
Reed, 489
_____

                                96-5658 - OPINION

4                             LAMBRIX v. SINGLETARY
                                     ____

U. S. 255, 262 (1989).  We in fact lack jurisdiction to review such
independently supported judgments on direct appeal: since the state-law
determination is sufficient to sustain the decree, any opinion of this Court on
the federal question would be purely advisory.  Herb v. Pitcairn, 324 U. S. 117,
                                                ____    _________
125-126 (1945); see also Sochor v. Florida, 504 U. S. 527, 533-534, and n. *
                         ______    ________
(1992).  The "independent and adequate state ground" doctrine is not technically
jurisdictional when a federal court considers a state prisoner's petition for
habeas corpus pursuant to 28 U. S. C. S2254, since the federal court is not
formally reviewing a judgment, but is determining whether the prisoner is "in
custody in violation of the Constitution or laws or treaties of the United
States."  We have nonetheless held that the doctrine applies to bar consider-
ation on federal habeas of federal claims that have been defaulted under state
law.  Coleman, supra, at 729-730, 750; see also Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U. S.
      _______  _____                            __________    ______
72, 81, 82 (1977), discussing Brown v. Allen, 344 U. S. 443, 486-487 (1953), and
                              _____    ______
Ex parte Spencer, 228 U. S. 652 (1913); Harris, supra, at 262.
_________________                       ______________
  Application of the "independent and adequate state ground" doctrine to federal
habeas review is based upon equitable considerations of federalism and comity. 
It "ensures that the States' interest in correcting their own mistakes is
respected in all federal habeas cases."  Coleman, 501 U. S., at 732.  "[A]
                                         ________
habeas petitioner who has failed to meet the State's procedural requirements for
presenting his federal claims has deprived the state courts of an opportunity to
address those claims in the first instance."  Ibid.  If the "independent and
                                              _____
adequate state ground" doctrine were not applied, a federal district court or
court of appeals would be able to review claims that this Court would have been
unable to consider on direct review.  See id., at 730-731.
                                          ___
  We have never had occasion to consider whether a

                                96-5658 - OPINION

                              LAMBRIX v. SINGLETARY                            5
                                     ____

federal court should resolve a State's contention that a petitioner's claim is
procedurally barred before considering whether his claim is Teague barred.  Our
                    ______                                  ______
opinions, however - most particularly, Coleman - certainly suggest that the
                                       _______
procedural-bar issue should ordinarily be considered first.  It was speculated
at oral argument that the Court of Appeals may have resolved the Teague issue
                                                                 ______
without first considering procedural bar because our opinions have stated that
the Teague retroactivity decision is to be made as a "threshold matter."  E.g.,
    ______                                                                ____
Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U. S. 302, 329 (1989); Caspari v. Bohlen, 510 U. S. 383,
_____    ________                            _______    _______
389 (1994).  That simply means, however, that the Teague issue should be
                                                  ______
addressed "before considering the merits of [a] claim."  510 U. S., at 389.  It
does not mean that the Teague inquiry is antecedent to consideration of the
                       ______
general prerequisites for federal habeas corpus which are unrelated to the
merits of the particular claim - such as the requirement that the petitioner be
"in custody," see 28 U. S. C. S2254(a), or that the state-court judgment not be
based on an independent and adequate state ground.  Constitutional issues are
generally to be avoided, and as even a cursory review of this Court's new-rule
cases reveals (including our discussion in Part IV, infra) the Teague inquiry
                                                    _____      ______
requires a detailed analysis of federal constitutional law.  See, e.g., Sawyer
                                                                  ____  ______
v. Smith, 497 U. S. 227, 233-241 (1990); Penry, supra, at 316-319; Gilmore v.
   ______                                ______________            _______
Taylor, 508 U. S. 333, 339-344 (1993); Saffle v. Parks, 494 U. S. 484, 488-494
_______                                ______    ______
(1990).
  We are somewhat puzzled that the Eleventh Circuit, after having held pro-
ceedings in abeyance while petitioner brought his claim in state court, did not
so much as mention the Florida Supreme Court's determination that Lambrix's
Espinosa claim was procedurally barred.  The State of Florida raised that point
________
before both the District Court and the Court of Appeals, going so far as to
reiterate it in a postjudgment Motion for Clarification

                                96-5658 - OPINION

6                             LAMBRIX v. SINGLETARY
                                     ____

and/or Modification of Opinion before the Court of Appeals, reprinted at App.
176.  A State's procedural rules are of vital importance to the orderly
administration of its criminal courts; when a federal court permits them to be
readily evaded, it undermines the criminal justice system.  We do not mean to
suggest that the procedural bar issue must invariably be resolved first; only
that it ordinarily should be.  Judicial economy might counsel giving the Teague
                                                                         ______
question priority, for example, if it were easily resolvable against the habeas
petitioner, whereas the procedural bar issue involved complicated issues of
state law.  Cf. 28 U. S. C. S2254(b)(2) (permitting a federal court to deny a
habeas petition on the merits notwithstanding the applicant's failure to exhaust
state remedies).
  Despite our puzzlement at the Court of Appeals' failure to resolve this case
on the basis of procedural bar, we hesitate to resolve it on that basis
ourselves.  Lambrix asserts several reasons why his claim is not procedurally
barred, which seem to us insubstantial but may not be so; as we have repeatedly
recognized, the courts of appeals and district courts are more familiar than we
with the procedural practices of the States in which they regularly sit, see,
e.g., Rummel v. Estelle, 445 U. S. 263, 267, n. 7 (1980); County Court of Ulster
____  ______    ________                                  ______________________
Cty. v. Allen, 442 U. S. 140, 153-154 (1979).  Rather than prolong this
____    ______
litigation by a remand, we proceed to decide the case on the Teague grounds that
                                                             ______
the Court of Appeals used.  

                                       III
  Florida employs a three-stage sentencing procedure.  First, the jury weighs
statutorily specified aggravating circumstances against any mitigating
circumstances, and renders an "advisory sentence" of either life imprisonment or
death.  Fla. Stat. S921.141(2).  Second, the trial

                                96-5658 - OPINION

                              LAMBRIX v. SINGLETARY                            7
                                     ____

court weighs the aggravating and mitigating circumstances, and enters a sentence
of life imprisonment or death; if the latter, its findings must be set forth in
writing.  S921.141(3).  The jury's advisory sentence is entitled to "great
weight" in the trial court's determination, Tedder v. State, 322 So. 2d 908, 910
                                            ______    ______
(Fla. 1975), but the court has an independent obligation to determine the
appropriate punishment, Ross v. State, 386 So. 2d 1191, 1197 (Fla. 1980). 
                        ____    ______
Third, the Florida Supreme Court automatically reviews all cases in which the
defendant is sentenced to death.  S921.141(4).
  Lambrix's jury, which was instructed on five aggravating circumstances,
recommended that he be sentenced to death for each murder.  The trial court
found five aggravating circumstances as to Moore's murder and four as to
Bryant's, including that each murder was "especially heinous and atrocious"; it
found no mitigating circumstances as to either murder; it concluded that the
aggravating circumstances outweighed the mitigating, and sentenced Lambrix to
death on each count.  App. 20-21.  Although Lambrix failed to raise any claims
concerning the sentencing procedure on direct appeal, the Florida Supreme Court
agreed with the trial court's findings as to the aggravating circumstances. 
Lambrix v. State, 494 So. 2d 1143, 1148 (1986).
_______    ______
  Lambrix contends that the jury's consideration of the HAC aggravator violated
the Eighth Amendment because the jury instructions concerning this circumstance
failed to provide sufficient guidance to limit the jury's discretion.  Like the
Eleventh Circuit, see 72 F. 3d, at 1503, we assume, arguendo, that this was so. 
                                                    ________
Lambrix further contends (and this is at the heart of the present case) that the
trial court's independent weighing did not cure this error.  Prior to our
opinion in Espinosa v. Florida, 505 U. S. 1079 (1992), the State had contended
           ________    ________
that Lambrix was not entitled to relief because the sentencing judge properly
found and weighed a narrowed HAC

                                96-5658 - OPINION

8                             LAMBRIX v. SINGLETARY
                                     ____

aggravator.  In Espinosa, however, we established the principle that if a
                _________
"weighing" State requires the sentencing trial judge to give deference to a
jury's advisory recommendation, neither the judge nor the jury is
                                                  ____________
constitutionally permitted to weigh invalid aggravating circumstances.  Lambrix
seeks the benefit of that principle; the State contends that it constitutes a
new rule under Teague and thus cannot be relied on in a federal habeas corpus
               ______
proceeding. (Ftnote. 1) 
            (Ftnote. 1)
  In Teague we held that, in general, "new constitutional rules of criminal
     ______
procedure will not be applicable to those cases which have become final before
the new rules are announced."  489 U. S., at 310-311.  To apply Teague, a
                                                                ______
federal court engages in a three-step process.  First, it determines the date
upon which the defendant's conviction became final.  See Caspari v. Bohlen, 510
                                                         _______    _______
U. S. 383, 390 (1994).  Second, it must "`[s]urve[y] the legal landscape as it
then existed,' Graham v. Collins, [506 U. S. 461, 468 (1993)], and `determine
               ______   _________
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,' Saffle v.
                                                                     ______
Parks, 494 U. S. 484, 488 (1990)."  Caspari, supra, at 390.  Finally, if the
______                              _______________
court determines that the habeas petitioner seeks the benefit of a new rule, the
court must consider whether the relief sought falls within one of the two narrow
exceptions to nonretroactivity.  See Gilmore v. Taylor, 508 U. S. 333, 345
                                     _______    _______
(1993).

                    
____________________

   1)  Lambrix also contends that the trial court itself failed to apply a
   1)  
properly narrowed HAC aggravator.  We decline to consider this contention
because it is not fairly within the question presented, which asked only whether
Teague v. Lane, 489 U. S. 288 (1989), bars relief based upon Espinosa v.
______    ____                                               ________
Florida, 505 U. S. 1079 (1992), Pet. for Cert. i.  See this Court's Rule
_______
14.1(a).

                                96-5658 - OPINION

                              LAMBRIX v. SINGLETARY                            9
                                     ____

                                       IV
  Lambrix's conviction became final on November 24, 1986, when his time for
filing a petition for certiorari expired.  Thus, our first and principal task is
to survey the legal landscape as of that date, to determine whether the rule
later announced in Espinosa was dictated by then-existing precedent - whether,
                   ________     ________
that is, the unlawfulness of Lambrix's conviction was apparent to all reasonable
jurists.  See, e.g., Graham, 506 U. S., at 477; Butler v. McKellar, 494 U. S.
               ____  _______                    ______    _________
407, 415 (1990); id., at 417-418 (Brennan, J., dissenting).
                 ___
  In Espinosa, we determined that the Florida capital jury is, in an important
     ________
respect, a co-sentencer with the judge.  As we explained: "Florida has
essentially split the weighing process in two.  Initially, the jury weighs
aggravating and mitigating circumstances, and the result of that weighing
process is then in turn weighed within the trial court's process of weighing
aggravating and mitigating circumstances."  505 U. S., at 1082.  We then
concluded that the jury's consideration of a vague aggravator tainted the trial
court's sentence because the trial court gave deference to the jury verdict (and
thus indirectly weighed the vague aggravator) in the course of weighing the
     __________
aggravating and mitigating circumstances.  Ibid.  We reasoned that this indirect
                                           _____
weighing created the same risk of arbitrariness as the direct weighing of an
invalid aggravating factor. Ibid. (Ftnote. 2)
                                  (Ftnote. 2)
                            _____

                    
____________________

   2)  Our description of the holding of Espinosa in the preceding paragraph of
   2)                                    ________
text is so clear that we are at a loss to explain the dissent's impression that
we accord Espinosa the "novel interpretation" that "the constitutional error in
          ________
the jury instruction will `automatically render a defendant's sentence uncon-
stitutional.'"  Post, at 2-3 (quoting infra, at 12).  The sentence from which
                ____                  ______
the phrase quoted by the dissent is wrenched (so violently that the word "not"
which precedes it is omitted) is not discussing the holding of Espinosa; indeed,
                                                               ________
it does not even mention Espinosa; nor does the entire paragraph or the previous
                 ________________
or subsequent paragraphs.

                                96-5658 - OPINION

10                            LAMBRIX v. SINGLETARY
                                     ____

  In our view, Espinosa was not dictated by precedent, but announced a new rule
               ________
which cannot be used as the basis for federal habeas corpus relief.  It is
significant that Espinosa itself did not purport to rely upon any controlling
                 ________
precedent. (Ftnote. 3)  The opinion cited only a single case, Baldwin v.
           (Ftnote. 3)                                        _______
Alabama, 472 U. S. 372, 382 (1985), in support of its central conclusion that
_______
indirect weighing of an invalid aggravator "creates the same potential for
arbitrariness" as direct weighing of an invalid aggravator.  Espinosa, 505
                                                             ________
U. S., at 1082.  And it introduced that lone citation with a "cf." - an
introductory signal which shows authority that supports the point in dictum or
by analogy, not one that "controls" or "dictates" the result.
  Baldwin itself contains further evidence that Espinosa set forth a new rule. 
  _______                                       ________
Baldwin considered the constitutionality of Alabama's death-sentencing scheme,
_______
in which the jury was required to "fix the punishment at death" if it found the
defendant guilty of an aggravated offense, whereupon the trial court would
conduct a sentencing hearing at which it would determine a sentence of death or
of life imprisonment.  472 U. S., at 376.  The defend-

                    
____________________

   3)  The dissent maintains that this statement is proven wrong by Espinosa's
   3)                                                               __________
citation of Godfrey v. Georgia, 446 U. S. 420 (1980), and Tedder v. State, 322
            _______    ________                           ______    _____
So. 2d 908 (Fla. 1975).  Post, at 2, n. 2.  This is wordplay.  While those two
                         ____
cases can be called "controlling authority" in the sense that the two proposi-
tions they established (that an instruction to the sentencing jury which fails
to define the HAC aggravator violates the Eighth Amendment, and that the Florida
sentencing judge must give great weight to the jury's recommendation) were among
the "givens" from which any decision in Espinosa had to be derived, they
                                        ________
assuredly were not "controlling authority" in the sense we obviously intend:
that they compel the outcome in Espinosa.  They do not answer the definitive
                                ________
question: whether the jury's advisory verdict taints the trial court's sentence,
that is, whether indirect weighing of an invalid factor creates the same
potential for arbitrariness as direct weighing.

                                96-5658 - OPINION

                              LAMBRIX v. SINGLETARY                           11
                                     ____

ant contended that because the jury's mandatory sentence would have been
unconstitutional standing alone, see Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U. S. 280,
                                     _______    _______________
288-305 (1976) (plurality opinion), it was impermissible for the trial court to
consider that verdict in determining its own sentence.  We did not reach that
contention because we concluded that under Alabama law the jury's verdict formed
no part of the trial judge's sentencing calculus.  Id., at 382.  We noted,
                                                   ___
however, on the page of the opinion that Espinosa cited, that the defendant's
                                         ________
"argument conceivably might have merit if the judge actually were required to
          ____________________________
consider the jury's `sentence' as a recommendation as to the sentence the jury
believed would be appropriate, cf. Proffitt v. Florida, 428 U. S. 242 (1976),
                                   ________    ________
and if the judge were obligated to accord some deference to it."  Baldwin, 472
                                                                  ________
U. S., at 382 (emphasis added); see also id., at 386, n. 8 ("express[ing] no
                                         ___
view" on the same point).  This highly tentative expression, far from showing
that Baldwin "dictate[s]" the result in Espinosa, see Sawyer v. Smith, 497 U. S.
     _______                            ________      ______    ______
227, 235 (1990), suggests just the opposite.  Indeed, in Baldwin the Chief
                                                         _______
Justice, who believed that Alabama's scheme did contemplate that the trial judge
                                            ___
would consider the jury's "sentence," nonetheless held the scheme
constitutional.  472 U. S., at 392 (opinion concurring in judgment).
  The Supreme Court decisions relied upon most heavily by petitioner are Godfrey
                                                                         _______
v. Georgia, 446 U. S. 420 (1980); Maynard v. Cartwright, 486 U. S. 356 (1988);
   ________                       _______    ___________
and Clemons v. Mississippi, 494 U. S. 738 (1990).  In Godfrey, we held that
    _______    ____________                           ________
Georgia's "outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible and inhuman" aggravator was
impermissibly vague, reasoning that there was nothing in the words "outrageously
or wantonly vile, horrible and inhuman," "that implies any inherent restraint on
the arbitrary and capricious infliction of the death sentence," and concluded
that these terms alone "gave the jury no

                                96-5658 - OPINION

12                            LAMBRIX v. SINGLETARY
                                     ____

guidance."  446 U. S., at 428-429 (plurality opinion).  Similarly, in Maynard v.
                                                                      _______
Cartwright, applied retroactively to February 1985 in Stringer v. Black, 503
___________                                           ________    ______
U. S. 222 (1992), we held that Oklahoma's HAC aggravator, which is identically
worded to Florida's HAC aggravator, was impermissibly vague because the statute
gave no more guidance than the vague aggravator at issue in Godfrey and the
                                                            _______
sentencing jury was not given a limiting instruction.  486 U. S., at 363-364.
  Although Godfrey and Maynard support the proposition that vague aggravators
           _______     _______
must be sufficiently narrowed to avoid arbitrary imposition of the death
penalty, these cases, and others, demonstrate that the failure to instruct the
sentencing jury properly with respect to the aggravator does not automatically
render a defendant's sentence unconstitutional.  We have repeatedly indicated
that a sentencing jury's consideration of a vague aggravator can be cured by
appellate review.  Thus, in Godfrey itself, we were less concerned about the
                            _______
failure to instruct the jury properly than we were about the Georgia Supreme
Court's failure to narrow the facially vague aggravator on appeal.  Had the
Georgia Supreme Court applied a narrowing construction of the aggravator, we
would have rejected the Eighth Amendment challenge to Godfrey's death sentence,
notwithstanding the failure to instruct the jury on that narrowing construction. 
Godfrey, supra, at 431-432.  Likewise in Maynard, we stressed that the vague HAC
_______________                          _______
aggravator had not been sufficiently limited on appeal by the Oklahoma Court of
Criminal Appeals "to cure the unfettered discretion of the jury."  486 U. S., at
364.
  We reached a similar conclusion in Clemons v. Mississippi, applied
                                     _______    ____________
retroactively to February 1985 in Stringer.  Clemons considered the question
                                  ________   _______
whether the sentencer's weighing of a vague HAC aggravator rendered that
sentence unconstitutional in a "weighing" State.  The sentencing jury in
Clemons, as in Maynard, was given
________       ________

                                96-5658 - OPINION

                              LAMBRIX v. SINGLETARY                           13
                                     ____

a HAC instruction that was unconstitutionally vague.  We held that "the Federal
Constitution does not prevent a state appellate court from upholding a death
sentence that is based in part on an invalid or improperly defined aggravating
circumstance either by reweighing of the aggravating and mitigating evidence or
by harmless- error review."  Clemons, 494 U. S., at 741, 745; see also Stringer,
                             ________                                  _________
503 U. S., at 230.
  The principles of the above-described cases do not dictate the result we
ultimately reached in Espinosa.  Florida, unlike Oklahoma, see Maynard, supra,
                      _________                                _______________
at 360, had given its facially vague HAC aggravator a limiting construction
sufficient to satisfy the Constitution.  See Proffitt v. Florida, 428 U. S. 242,
                                             ________    ________
255-256 (1976) (joint opinion of Stewart, Powell, and STEVENS, JJ.); id., at 260
                                                                     ___
(White, J., concurring in judgment).  Thus, unlike the sentencing juries in
Clemons, Maynard, and Godfrey, who were not instructed with a properly limited
_________________     ________
aggravator, the sentencing trial judge in Espinosa did find the HAC aggravator
                                          ________
under a properly limited construction.  See Espinosa, 505 U. S., at 1082, citing
                                            ________
Walton v. Arizona, 497 U. S. 639, 653 (1990). (Ftnote. 4)  A close
                                              (Ftnote. 4)
______    ________

                    
____________________

   4)  The dissent says that "[g]iven that the judge's instruction to the jury
   4)  
failed to narrow the HAC aggravator, there is no reason to believe that [the
trial judge] appropriately narrowed the [HAC] factor in his . . . deliber-
ations."  Post, at 6.  Our cases establish that there is always a "reason to
          ____                                           ______
believe" that, which we consider fully adequate: "Trial judges are presumed to
know the law and to apply it in making their decisions.  If the [state] Supreme
Court has narrowed the definition of the [HAC] aggravating circumstance, we
presume that [state] trial judges are applying the narrower definition."  Walton
                                                                          ______
v. Arizona, 497 U. S. 639, 653 (1990).  Without abandoning our precedent, the
   ________
most the dissent can argue is that the ordinary presumption is overcome by
failure to instruct.  The factual support for such an argument is questionable:
judges fail to instruct juries about rules of law they are aware of all the
time.  Moreover, if the argument were correct, the holding in Espinosa itself
                                                              ________
would have been unnecessary: we could have simply said there (as the dissent
would have us say here) that the failure to instruct on the narrowing
construction displayed the judge's ignorance of the narrowing construction. 
Instead, of course, Espinosa cited the passage from Walton quoted above. 
                    ________                        ______
Espinosa, 505  U. S., at 1082.
________

                                96-5658 - OPINION

14                            LAMBRIX v. SINGLETARY
                                     ____

examination of the Florida death-penalty scheme persuades us that a reasonable
jurist considering Lambrix's sentence in 1986 could have reached a conclusion
different from the one Espinosa announced in 1992.  There were at least three
                       ________
different, but somewhat related, approaches that would have suggested a differ-
ent outcome:
  (1) The mere cabining of the trial court's discretion would avoid arbitrary
      _______________________________________________________________________
imposition of the death penalty, and thus avoid unconstitutionality.  In
____________________________________________________________________
Proffitt v. Florida, supra, we upheld the Florida death-penalty scheme against
________    ________ _____
the contention that it resulted in arbitrary imposition of the death penalty,
see Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U. S. 153, 188 (1976), because "trial judges are given
    _____    ________
specific and detailed guidance to assist them in deciding whether to impose a
death penalty or imprisonment for life" and because the Florida Supreme Court
reviewed sentences for consistency.  Proffitt, supra, at 253 (joint opinion of
                                     ________  _____
Stewart, Powell, and STEVENS, JJ.); id., at 260-261 (opinion of White, J.,
                                    ___
joined by The Chief Justice and REHNQUIST, J.).  (In Proffitt itself,
                                                     ________
incidentally, the jury had not been instructed on an appropriately narrowed HAC
                           ____
aggravator, see Proffitt v. Wainwright, 685 F. 2d 1227, 1264, n. 57 (CA11 1982),
                ________    ___________
cert. denied, 464 U. S. 1002 (1983).)  From what was said in Proffitt it would,
                                                             ________
as the en banc Eleventh Circuit noted, "sensibly follow that the judge's proper
review of the sentence cures any risk of arbitrariness occasioned by the jury's
consideration of an unconstitutionally vague aggravating circumstance."  Glock
                                                                         _____
v. Singletary, 65 F. 3d 878, 886 (1995), cert. denied, 519 U. S. ___ (1996).  It
   ___________
could have been argued,

                                96-5658 - OPINION

                              LAMBRIX v. SINGLETARY                           15
                                     ____

of course, as the dissent contends, see post, at 3-4, that prior constitutional
                                        ____
error by a sentencing-determining jury would make a difference, but both the
conclusion and the premise of that argument were debatable: not only whether it
would make a difference, but even (as the succeeding point demonstrates) whether
_____
there was any constitutional error by a sentencing-determining jury.
      ___
  (2) There was no error for the trial judge to cure, since under Florida law
      _______________________________________________________________________
the trial court, not the jury, was the sentencer.  In Espinosa we concluded, in
___________________________________________________   ________
effect, that the jury was at least in part a co-sentencer along with the trial
court.  That determination can fairly be traced to our opinion in Sochor v.
                                                                  ______
Florida, 504 U. S. 527 (1992), decided just three weeks earlier, where we
________
explained that under Florida law the trial court "is at least a constituent part
of `the sentencer,'" implying that the jury was that as well.  Id., at 535-536. 
                                                               ___
That characterization is in considerable tension with our pre-1986 view.  In
Proffitt, for example, after considering Tedder  v. State, 322 So. 2d 908 (Fla.
_________                                ________   _____
1975), on which Espinosa primarily relied, the Court determined that the trial
                ________
court was the sentencer.  E.g., 428 U. S., at 249 (joint opinion of Stewart,
          _____________   ____
Powell, and STEVENS, JJ.) ("the actual sentence is determined by the trial
                                _______________                      _____
judge" (emphasis added)); id., at 251 (the trial court is "[t]he sentencing
_____                     ___
authority in Florida"); id., at 252 ("the sentence is determined by the judge
                        ___
rather than by the jury"); id., at 260 (White, J., concurring in judgment).  We
                           ___
even distinguished the Florida scheme from the Georgia scheme on the grounds
that "in Florida the sentence is determined by the trial judge rather than by
                                                   ___________
the jury."  Id., at 252 (joint opinion) (emphasis added).  Some eight years
            ___
later, just two years before petitioner's conviction became final, we continued
to describe the judge as the sentencer.  See Spaziano v. Florida, 468 U. S. 447
                         ___                 ________    ________
(1984); see also Barclay v. Florida, 463 U. S. 939,
                 _______    ________

                                96-5658 - OPINION

16                            LAMBRIX v. SINGLETARY
                                     ____

952-954 (plurality opinion); id., at 962 (STEVENS, J., concurring in judgment). 
                             ___
(Although he now believes the jury is a co-sentencer, at the time Lambrix's
conviction became final JUSTICE STEVENS had explained that "the sentencing
authority [is] the jury in Georgia, the judge in Florida."  Ibid.)  It would not
                                                            _____
have been unreasonable to rely on what we had said in Proffitt, Spaziano, and
                                                      ________  ________
Barclay - that the trial court was the sentencer - and to conclude that where
_______
the sentencer considered properly narrowed aggravators there was simply no error
under Godfrey or Maynard.  The Florida Supreme Court and the Eleventh Circuit
      _______    _______
held precisely that in 1989, see Smalley v. State, 546 So. 2d 720, 722;
                                 _______    _____
Bertolotti v. Dugger, 883 F. 2d 1503, 1526-1527, cert. denied, 497 U. S. 1032
__________    ______
(1990); and in 1985 the Eleventh Circuit foresaw the possibility of such a
holding: "[Spaziano's] reasoning calls into question whether any given error in
           ________
such a merely `advisory' proceeding should be considered to be of constitutional
magnitude."  Proffitt v. Wainwright, 756 F. 2d 1500, 1502.
             ________    __________
  (3) The trial court's weighing of properly narrowed aggravators and mitigators
      __________________________________________________________________________
was sufficiently independent of the jury to cure any error in the jury's
________________________________________________________________________
consideration of a vague aggravator.  Although the Florida Supreme Court had
______________________________________
interpreted its statute - which provided that the judge was the sentencer, Fla.
Stat. S921.141(3), and that the jury rendered merely an "advisory sentence,"
S921.141(2) - as requiring the trial judge to give "great weight" to a jury's
advisory recommendation, Tedder v. State, supra, that court nonetheless
                         ______    ______ _____
emphasized that the trial court must "independently weigh the evidence in
aggravation and mitigation," and that "[u]nder no combination of circumstances
can th[e] [jury's] recommendation usurp the judge's role by limiting his discre-
tion."  Eutzy v. State, 458 So. 2d 755, 759 (Fla. 1984), cert. denied, 471 U. S.
        _____    ______
1045 (1985).  In one case, the Florida Supreme Court vacated a sentence because
the

                                96-5658 - OPINION

                              LAMBRIX v. SINGLETARY                           17
                                     ____

trial court had given "undue weight to the jury's recommendation of death and
did not make an independent judgment of whether or not the death penalty should
                ___________
be imposed."  Ross v. State, 386 So. 2d 1191, 1197 (1980) (emphasis added).  In
              ____    ______
Spaziano v. Florida, supra, we acknowledged that the Florida trial court
________    ______________
conducts "its own weighing of the aggravating and mitigating circumstances,"
id., at 451, and that "[r]egardless of the jury's recommendation, the trial
___
judge is required to conduct an independent review of the evidence and to make
                                ____________
his own findings regarding aggravating and mitigating circumstances," id., at
                                                                      ___
466 (emphasis added); see also Proffitt, supra, at 251. (Ftnote. 5)  Given these
                                                        (Ftnote. 5)
                               ________________
precedents, 

                    
____________________

   5)  The dissent accuses us of "simply ignoring the reasoning in Tedder." 
   5)                                                              ______
Post, at 5.  We have of course not done so.  See supra, at 7, 15, 16.  The
____                                             _____
dissent, however, fails to discuss, or indeed even mention, the cases interpret-
ing Tedder that contradict the dissent's view - cases in both this Court and the
    ______
Florida Supreme Court repeatedly emphasizing the trial judge's obligation to
make an independent assessment and weighing of the aggravating and mitigating
        ___________
circumstances.  The dissent relies, for example, upon the Florida Supreme
Court's decision in Riley v. Wainwright, 517 So. 2d 656 (1987), see post, at 2,
                    _____    __________                             ____
n. 3 (a decision rendered after Lambrix's conviction became final and hence not
technically relevant).  But subsequent to that case the Florida Supreme Court
summarized its jurisprudence as follows: "Our case law contains many instances
where a trial judge's override of a jury recommendation of life has been upheld. 
Notwithstanding the jury recommendation, whether it be for life imprisonment or
death, the judge is required to make an independent determination, based on the
                                        ____________
aggravating and mitigating factors.  Moreover, this procedure has been previous-
ly upheld against constitutional challenge."  Grossman v. State, 525 So. 2d 833,
                                              ________    ______
840 (Fla. 1988) (emphasis added; citations omitted).  "It is clear . . . that
the prosecutor correctly stated the law in Florida: the judge is the sentencing
authority and the jury's role is merely advisory."  Id., at 839.  It is not our
                                                    ___
burden, of course, to establish that these statements in Grossman, or in the
                                                         ________
other cases we rely upon, were accurate; as we later determined, they were wrong
and the dissent's (current) reading of Tedder is correct.  But the question
                                       ______
before us is whether a reasonable jurist could have disagreed with the dissent's
interpretation of Tedder at the time of Lambrix's conviction.  In treating as
                  ______
relevant to that question only that portion of precedent vindicated by later
decisions, the dissent "endues the jurist with prescience, not reasonableness." 
Stringer v. Black, 503 U. S. 222, 244 (1992) (SOUTER, J., dissenting).
________    ______

                                96-5658 - OPINION

18                            LAMBRIX v. SINGLETARY
                                     ____

it was reasonable to think that the trial court's review would at least
constitute the sort of "reweighing" that would satisfy Clemons v. Mississippi,
                                                       _______    ___________
494 U. S. 738 (1990), see also Stringer, 503 U. S., at 237.  In fact, given the
                               _________
view of some Members of this Court that appellate reweighing was inconsistent
with the Eighth Amendment, see, e.g., Cabana v. Bullock, 474 U. S. 376, 400-401,
                                ____  ______    ________
404 (1986) (Blackmun, J., dissenting, joined by Brennan and Marshall, JJ.);
Clemons, supra, at 769-772 (Blackmun, J., joined by Brennan, Marshall, and
_______________
STEVENS, JJ., concurring in part and dissenting in part), it would have been
reasonable to think that trial-court reweighing was preferable.  As one Court of
Appeals was prompted to note, "Clemons's holding, which arguably points in the
                               _______
opposite direction from Espinosa, indicates that even in 1990 Espinosa's result
                        _________                             ________
would not have been dictated by precedent."  Glock v. Singletary, 65 F. 3d, at
                                             _____    ___________
887 (en banc).
  That Espinosa announced a new rule is strongly confirmed by our decision in
       ________
Walton v. Arizona, 497 U. S. 639 (1990).  Although decided after petitioner's
______    ________
conviction became final, Walton is a particularly good proxy for what a reason-
                         ______
able jurist would have thought in 1986, given that the only relevant cases
decided by this Court in the interim were Maynard and Clemons, the holdings of
                                          _______     ________
both of which, we later held, were compelled by the law in 1985, see Stringer,
                                                                     _________
supra.  In Walton, we rejected a claim that Arizona's HAC aggravator failed
______     ______
sufficiently to channel the sentencer's discretion.  Summarizing Godfrey and
                                                                 _______
Maynard, we explained that "in neither case did the state appellate court, in
________
reviewing the propriety of the death sentence, purport to affirm the death
sentence by applying a limiting definition," and this, we said, "w[as] crucial
to the conclusion we reached in Maynard."  Walton, supra, at 653.  This
                                _______    ______________
reasoning suggests that even following Maynard, a weighing-state death sentence
                                       ________
would satisfy the Eighth Amendment so

                                96-5658 - OPINION

                              LAMBRIX v. SINGLETARY                           19
                                     ____

long as the vague aggravator was narrowed at some point in the process. 
Additionally, in the course of our opinion, we characterized Clemons as follows:
                                                             _______

   "[E]ven if a trial judge fails to apply the narrowing construction or implies
   an improper construction, the Constitution does not necessarily require that
   a state appellate court vacate a death sentence based on that factor. 
   Rather, as we held in Clemons v. Mississippi, 494 U. S. 738 (1990), a state
                         _______    ____________
   appellate court may itself determine whether the evidence supports the
   existence of the aggravating circumstance as properly defined or the court
                                                                 __
   may eliminate consideration of the factor altogether and determine whether
   any remaining aggravating circumstances are sufficient to warrant the death
   penalty."  Walton, 497 U. S., at 653-654 (emphasis added).
              _______

Our use of the disjunctive suggests that as late as 1990, if a Florida trial
court determined that the defendant's conduct fell within the narrowed HAC
aggravator, the sentence would satisfy the Eighth Amendment irrespective of
whether the trial court reweighed the aggravating and mitigating
factors. (Ftnote. 6)  The holdings in Stringer, Maynard, Clemons, and Godfrey
         (Ftnote. 6)                  ___________________________     _______
cannot be thought to suggest otherwise, because there was no indication in those
cases that the state courts had found the facts of the crimes to fall within
appropriately narrowed definitions of the aggravators.  Before Espinosa, we had
                                                               ________
never

                    
____________________

   6)  The dissent is thus simply wrong in stating that we have confused
   6)  
appellate application of a limiting construction with a trial court's deference
to a tainted jury recommendation, see post, at 6-7.  Walton indicated that our
                                      ____           ______
precedents provided two distinct and permissible routes to satisfy the Eighth
Amendment where the sentencer considered a vague aggravator: a court's finding
of the aggravator under a proper limiting construction, or independent
                                                        __
reweighing of the circumstances.

                                96-5658 - OPINION

20                            LAMBRIX v. SINGLETARY
                                     ____

invalidated a death sentence where a court found the challenged aggravator to be
within the appellate court's narrowed definition of a facially vague aggravator.
  Most of the dissent is devoted to making a forceful case that Espinosa was a
                                                                ________
reasonable interpretation of prior law - perhaps even the most reasonable one. 
But the Teague inquiry - which is applied to Supreme Court decisions that are,
        ______
one must hope, usually the most reasonable interpretation of prior law -
               _______
requires more than that.  It asks whether Espinosa was dictated by precedent -
                                          ________     ________
i.e., whether no other interpretation was reasonable.  We think it plain from
____          ________
the above that a jurist considering all the relevant material (and not, like the
dissent, considering only the material that favors the Espinosa result) could
                                                       ________
reasonably have reached a conclusion contrary to our holding in that case. 
Indeed, both before and after Lambrix's conviction became final, every court
decision we are aware of did so.  See, e.g., Smalley v. State, 546 So. 2d, at
                                       ____  _______    ______
722; Proffitt v. Wainwright, 756 F. 2d, at 1502; Bertolotti v. Dugger, 883
     ________    ___________                     __________    _______
F. 2d, at 1527; Sanchez-Velasco v. State, 570 So. 2d 908, 916 (Fla. 1990), cert.
                _______________    ______
denied, 500 U. S. 929 (1991).
  It has been suggested that Espinosa was not a new rule because our decision
                             ________
was handed down as a per curiam without oral argument.  See, e.g., Glock v.
                     __________                              ____  _____
Singletary, 65 F. 3d, at 896, n. 11 (en banc) (Tjoflat, C. J., dissenting). 
___________
Whatever inference of established law a summary, per curiam disposition might
                                                 __________
normally carry is precluded by the peculiar circumstances surrounding the
summary per curiam in Espinosa.  Just three weeks prior to our issuance of
        __________    ________
Espinosa, we had decided a case that raised the identical issue, and in which
________
that issue had been fully briefed and argued; we found ourselves without
jurisdiction to decide the point, however, because the defendant had failed to
preserve his objection in the state courts.  See Sochor v. Florida, 504 U. S.,
                                                 ______    ________
at 533-534.  It is obvious on the face of the

                                96-5658 - OPINION

                              LAMBRIX v. SINGLETARY                           21
                                     ____

matter that Espinosa was only in the most technical sense an "unargued" case: we
            ________
used that case, which was pending on petition for certiorari when Sochor was
                                                                  ______
decided, as the vehicle for resolving a fully argued point without consuming
additional resources.

                                        V
  Since we have determined that Espinosa announced a new rule under Teague,
                                ________                            _______
there remains only the task of determining whether that new rule nonetheless
falls within one of the two exceptions to our nonretroactivity doctrine.  "The
first exception permits the retroactive application of a new rule if the rule
places a class of private conduct beyond the power of the State to proscribe,
see Teague, 489 U. S., at 311, or addresses a `substantive categorical
    _______
guarante[e] accorded by the Constitution,' such as a rule `prohibiting a certain
category of punishment for a class of defendants because of their status or
offense.'"  Saffle v. Parks, 494 U. S., at 494 (quoting Penry v. Lynaugh, 492
            ______    ______                            _____    ________
U. S., at 329, 330).  Plainly, this exception has no application to this case. 
Espinosa "neither decriminalize[s] a class of conduct nor prohibit[s] the
________
imposition of capital punishment on a particular class of persons."  494 U. S.,
at 495.
  The second exception is for "`watershed rules of criminal procedure'
implicating the fundamental fairness and accuracy of the criminal proceeding." 
Ibid. (quoting Teague, 498 U. S., at 311).  Lambrix does not contend that this
_____          ______
exception applies to Espinosa errors, and our opinion in Sawyer v. Smith, 497
                     ________                            ______    ______
U. S. 227, 241-244 (1990), makes it quite clear that that is so.

                                     *  *  *
  For the reasons stated, the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh
Circuit is 
                                                                       Affirmed.
                                                                       _________