Court Opinion

ID: 9433058
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:38:48.205419+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:39.067607
License: Public Domain

Justice Souter,
concurring.
I join the Court’s opinion because it correctly recognizes that factors adequate to perform the function of genuine narrowing, as well as factors that otherwise guide the jury in selecting which defendants receive the death penalty, are not *981susceptible to mathematical precision; they must depend for their requisite clarity on embodying a “common-sense core of meaning,” as Justice White put it in Jurek v. Texas, 428 U. S. 262, 279 (1976) (concurring opinion). Taking factor (b) to be essentially propositional, as the Court uses the term, ante, at 974-975,1 find it is sufficiently clear to pass muster; and I agree with the Court’s analysis of factor (i) and the challenged portion of factor (a), neither of which is framed as a proposition.