Court Opinion

ID: 9432490
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:35:31.645381+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:34.153860
License: Public Domain

*238Justice Souter,
with whom Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas join, dissenting.
Today the Court holds that no reasonable jurist could have believed in 1985, two years after Zant v. Stephens, 462 U. S. 862 (1983), that the holding of that case would apply to a so-called “weighing” State. The Court maintains, on the contrary, that in 1985 it was obvious that a sentencer’s weighing of a vague aggravating circumstance deprives a defendant of individualized sentencing. While that may be obvious after Maynard v. Cartwright, 486 U. S. 356 (1988), I submit that was not so before this Court decided that case. I respectfully dissent.
I
Under the principle first announced in Teague v. Lane, 489 U. S. 288 (1989), a prisoner seeking habeas corpus relief in federal court generally cannot benefit from a new rule announced after the prisoner’s conviction became final, id., at 301 (plurality opinion), that is, after exhausting all direct appeals, see Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U. S. 302, 314 (1989). A decision announces a new rule “if the result was not dictated by precedent existing at the time the defendant’s conviction became final.” Teague, supra, at 301 (plurality opinion) (emphasis omitted). The result in a given case is not dictated by precedent if it is “susceptible to debate among reasonable minds,” Butler v. McKellar, 494 U. S. 407, 415 (1990), or, put differently, if “reasonable jurists may disagree,” Sawyer v. Smith, 497 U. S. 227, 234 (1990).
Petitioner’s conviction became final for Teague purposes on February 19,1985. He now claims the benefit of the rule that an Eighth Amendment violation occurs when a sen-tencer in a weighing State considers a vague aggravating circumstance, even if the sentencer has also found the existence of at least one other aggravating circumstance that is neither vague nor otherwise infirm. Because this Court never endorsed that position before February 19,1985,1 will discuss the relevant pre-1985 decisions, infra, Part I-A, and *239the post-1985 decisions that, implicitly at least, announced the rule petitioner invokes, infra, Part I-B. Finally, I will enquire whether this rule was dictated by the pre-1985 decisions, infra, Part II.
A
The cases determining the apposite law before 1985 start with Godfrey v. Georgia, 446 U. S. 420 (1980). Under the Georgia sentencing scheme, a defendant is given a life sentence unless the jury finds one or more aggravating circumstances. Once the jury does that, aggravating circumstances no longer play a role: the jury is instructed to determine whether the defendant should receive a death sentence by considering all the evidence in aggravation and in mitigation. The jury is not instructed to weigh any aggravating circumstances against mitigating circumstances. In Godfrey, a Georgia jury had returned a death verdict on the strength of just one aggravating circumstance, that the murder was “outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible and inhuman.” ' Id., at 426 (plurality opinion). Saying that “[a] person of ordinary sensibility could fairly categorize almost every murder as ‘outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible and inhuman,’ ” id., at 428-429, this Court held that this circumstance failed to impose any “restraint on the arbitrary and capricious infliction of the death sentence,” id., at 428. Accordingly, Georgia’s sentencing scheme, as applied, violated the Eighth Amendment in the same way as the scheme struck down in Furman v. Georgia, 408 U. S. 238 (1972): it failed to “provide a meaningful basis for distinguishing the few cases in which [the penalty] is imposed from the many cases in which it is not.” 446 U. S., at 427 (internal quotation marks omitted).
After Godfrey came Zant v. Stephens, 462 U. S. 862 (1983), arising from a Georgia jury’s death verdict based on a showing of several aggravating circumstances, one of which was that respondent had “a substantial history of serious assaul-tive criminal convictions,” id., at 866. Shortly after respond*240ent’s sentencing, the Supreme Court of Georgia, in a different case, held that the “substantial history” circumstance left “a wide latitude of discretion in a jury as to whether or not to impose the death penalty,” rendering a death sentence imposed upon the strength of the “substantial history” circumstance alone unconstitutional under Furman. Arnold v. State, 236 Ga. 534, 541, 224 S. E. 2d 386, 392 (1976). The Supreme Court of Georgia nevertheless refused to vacate Stephens’ sentence, holding it adequately supported by the other, unchallenged, aggravating circumstances. Stephens v. State, 237 Ga. 259, 261-262, 227 S. E. 2d 261, 263, cert. denied, 429 U. S. 986 (1976). This Court agreed, holding Godfrey to be distinguishable because, in that case, the single aggravating circumstance failed to narrow the class of persons eligible for the death penalty, as required by the Eighth Amendment, 462 U. S., at 878, while in Stephens, the remaining aggravating circumstances properly discharged the narrowing obligation, id., at 879. The vagueness of one among several aggravating circumstances was therefore held to be irrelevant, and the scheme itself adequate under Furman, 462 U. S., at 888-889, so long as it included mandatory appellate review for any arbitrariness or disproportionality stemming from some other source, id., at 890.
The last relevant pre-1985 decision is Barclay v. Florida, 463 U. S. 939 (1983). The Florida schéme, like the one in Georgia, requires the sentencer to impose a life sentence if it finds no aggravating circumstances present. But, unlike Georgia, Florida is a weighing State, in which the sentencer who finds that one or more aggravating circumstances exist must determine the sentence by weighing aggravating and mitigating circumstances. In Barclay, a judge had imposed a death sentence after finding several aggravating circumstances, one of which was that the petitioner had a criminal record, id., at 944-945, which Florida law did not recognize as an aggravating circumstance, id., at 946. This Court held that the resulting death sentence did not violate the Eighth *241Amendment, for the same reason the sentence in Stephens did not: the remaining aggravating circumstances satisfied the Eighth Amendment’s narrowing requirement. See id., at 957 (plurality opinion); id., at 966-967 (Stevens, J., concurring in judgment); see also id., at 947-948, n. 5 (plurality opinion) (distinguishing Godfrey as involving only one aggravating circumstance).
B
The first case in which this Court applied the rule from which petitioner seeks to benefit was Maynard v. Cartwright, 486 U. S. 356 (1988). There, an Oklahoma jury had found the presence of two aggravating circumstances, one of which was that the murder was “especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel.” Because Oklahoma is a weighing State, the trial court had instructed the jury that, in determining the penalty, it should weigh these aggravating circumstances against any mitigating circumstances, and the jury had eventually returned a verdict of death. On collateral review, the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit held that the “heinous, atrocious, or cruel” circumstance without further instruction was vague in the Godfrey sense. See Cartwright v. Maynard, 822 F. 2d 1477, 1485-1491 (1987) (en banc). Distinguishing Stephens, the Court of Appeals held that this vagueness amounted to an Eighth Amendment violation because Oklahoma was a weighing State, 822 F. 2d, at 1480.1 It vacated Cartwright’s sentence, noting that Oklahoma’s highest court had failed to cure the constitutional defect by either reweighing or performing harmless-error review, id., at 1482.
This Court affirmed, holding that Godfrey controlled because the “especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel” circumstance gave no more guidance than the “outrageously or *242wantonly vile, horrible and inhuman” circumstance in Godfrey, 486 U. S., at 363-364. The Court rejected Oklahoma’s argument that Cartwright’s sentence was adequately supported by the unchallenged aggravating circumstance, observing that Oklahoma’s highest court had a practice of not attempting to “save the death penalty when one of several aggravating circumstances ... was found invalid,” id., at 365. (Instead, that court would simply commute any death sentence imposed after finding an “invalid” aggravating circumstance into a sentence of life imprisonment, see id., at 359.) The Court said that “the Court of Appeals cannot be faulted for not itself undertaking what the state courts themselves refused to do,” id., at 365.
Cartwright was followed by Clemons v. Mississippi, 494 U. S. 738 (1990). Like Oklahoma, Mississippi is a weighing State, and a jury had returned a death verdict finding that two aggravating circumstances were present (one of which had been that the crime was “especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel”), and finding that these two aggravating circumstances outweighed any mitigating circumstances. The Supreme Court of Mississippi had affirmed, distinguishing Cartwright on the ground, inter alia, that, while Oklahoma had no procedure for salvaging a death sentence resting in part on a vague aggravating circumstance, there was an established procedure in Mississippi. “[W]hen one aggravating circumstance is found to be invalid ..., a remaining valid aggravating circumstance will nonetheless support the death penalty verdict.” 494 U. S., at 743-744 (internal quotation marks omitted). In this Court, Clemons argued that where a jury had originally imposed a death sentence, the Constitution demanded resentencing by a jury whenever a state appellate court found that the jury had considered an unconstitutionally vague aggravating circumstance. Id., at 744. This Court rejected the argument, saying that nothing in the Constitution forbade a state appellate court to salvage an unconstitutional sentence, id., at 745-750, although, at a *243minimum, the state appellate court would have to reweigh or perform harmless-error review, id., at 751-752.
In rejecting a more relaxed rule “authorizing or requiring affirmance of a death sentence so long as there remains at least one valid aggravating circumstance,” the Court explained:
“An automatic rule of affirmance in a weighing State would be invalid under Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U. S. 586 (1978), and Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 U. S. 104 (1982), for it would not give defendants the individualized treatment that would result from actual reweighing of the mix of mitigating factors and aggravating circumstances. Cf. Barclay v. Florida, [supra, at 958].” Id., at 752.
See also Parker v. Dugger, 498 U. S. 308, 321-322 (1991).
Today the Court adds to Clemons’ explanation by reasoning that a sentencer’s weighing of a vague aggravating circumstance deprives the defendant of individualized sentencing because it “creates the possibility ... of randomness.” Ante, at 236. The Court says that a sentencer’s weighing of a vague aggravating circumstance may “ske[w]” the weighing process, ante, at 232, by placing a “thumb [on] death’s side of the scale,” ibid., by “creating] the risk [of] treating] the defendant as more deserving of the death penalty,” ante, at 235-236, or by “creating] the possibility ... of bias in favor of the death penalty,” ibid.2
II
Like Godfrey and Stephens, the petitioner in the instant case was sentenced to death after a finding of a vague aggra*244vating circumstance. Like Stephens, but unlike Godfrey, he was sentenced on the basis of more than one aggravating circumstance, only one of which he challenged. The issue in this case, then, is whether it would have been reasonable to believe in 1985 that a sentencer’s weighing of a vague3 aggravating circumstance does not offend the Eighth Amendment so long as the sentencer has found at least one other valid aggravating circumstance.4 Put differently, the question is whether it would have been reasonable to believe in 1985 that the holding in Stephens could apply to a weighing State. The majority answers these questions in the negative, saying that in 1985, no reasonable jurist could have failed to discover a concern with randomness in this Court’s individualized-sentencing cases, or have failed to realize that a sentencer’s weighing of a vague aggravating circumstance deprives a defendant of individualized sentencing. I think this answer endues the jurist with prescience, not reasonableness.
It is true that the Court in Stephens reserved judgment on the question whether its holding would apply to a weighing State:
*245“[I]n deciding this case we do not express any opinion concerning the possible significance of a holding that a particular aggravating circumstance is ‘invalid’ under a statutory scheme in which the judge or jury is specifically instructed to weigh statutory aggravating and mitigating circumstances in exercising its discretion whether to impose the death penalty.” 462 U. S., at 890.
I agree that this statement would have put a reasonable jurist on notice that Stephens’ rule might not apply to a weighing State, but the answer to the question reserved was no foregone conclusion. It is worth remembering that the Georgia jury in Stephens was instructed simply to “consider” all aggravating and mitigating evidence, see id., at 871, leaving it with what the respondent described as “unbridled discretion” at the final stage of sentencing, id., at 875, which this Court found to be no violation of the Eighth Amendment, id., at 875-880. If unguided discretion created no risk of randomness, it was hardly obvious that this risk arose when a vague aggravating circumstance was weighed. To conclude after Stephens that the outcome in Cartwright and Clemons was dictated is a leap of reason.
The leap lengthens when one considers Barclay, for I think a reasonable jurist, in 1985, could have concluded that this Court resolved the question reserved in Stephens when it decided Barclay, which strongly implied that the Stephens principle applied to weighing States like Florida. See 463 U. S., at 957 (plurality opinion); id., at 966-967 (Stevens, J., concurring in judgment). The majority attempts to minimize Barclay by saying that the Barclay Court upheld the sentence “only because it was clear that the Florida Supreme Court had determined that the sentence would have been the same had the sentencing judge given no weight to the invalid factor.” Ante, at 231 (citing 463 U. S., at 958 (plurality opinion)). But I do not think Barclay can be explained away so easily.
*246It is true that the plurality opinion noted that the Supreme Court of Florida performed harmless-error review. Ibid. But the opinion’s discussion of this point merely responded to Barclay’s argument that the Supreme Court of Florida had failed to apply state-law precedent properly, which, Barclay maintained, required harmless-error review. See id., at 957. The plurality rejected that argument, saying that failure to apply those cases would be “mere errors of state law [that] are not the concern of this Court,” and that, in any event, the Supreme Court of Florida had, contrary to petitioner’s assertions, performed harmless-error review. Id., at 957-958. Nothing in the plurality’s opinion suggests that harmless-error review would be constitutionally required where the sentencer had weighed an “invalid” aggravating circumstance.
It is also true that the concurrence of Justice Stevens and Justice Powell, who cast the deciding votes in Barclay, stated that Florida law required the Supreme Court of Florida to reweigh aggravating and mitigating circumstances. See id., at 974 (opinion concurring in judgment). But that simply responded to Barclay’s argument that the Supreme Court of Florida failed to perform the quantum of appellate review that the Constitution requires in every capital case (regardless of whether the trial court commits state-law error). See id., at 972-973. Justice Stevens’ opinion merely noted that the principal opinion in Proffitt v. Florida, 428 U. S. 242, 253 (1976) (joint opinion of Stewart, Powell, and Stevens, JJ.), had held that reweighing satisfied the appellate-review obligation imposed by the Constitution. 463 U. S., at 974. Justice Stevens never said that reweighing would be the constitutionally required minimum where the sentencer had weighed an “invalid” aggravating circumstance.
Although Barclay may be read as assuming that some appellate test must be passed if a death verdict is to stand in a weighing State despite the finding of an invalid aggravating *247circumstance, nowhere do the opinions state that the State Supreme Court’s mandated proportionality review would not satisfy the required constitutional minimum. See Proffitt, supra, at 258 (joint opinion of Stewart, Powell, and Stevens, JJ.) (“The Supreme Court of Florida reviews each death sentence to ensure that similar results are reached in similar cases”). Mississippi law requires just such review. See ante, at 226.
In sum, after Barclay, a jurist mindful of the Stephens caveat could reasonably have assumed that weighing one invalid aggravating circumstance along with one or more valid ones need not be treated as significant enough to amount to constitutional error in a State that at least provided appellate review for proportionality. That is dispositive under Teague: a reasonable reading of Barclay bars the conclusion that the result in Cartwright and Clemons was dictated by the cases on our books in 1985.
The Fifth Circuit, indeed, held as recently as 1988 that the rule in Stephens applied to a weighing State. See Stringer v. Jackson, 862 F. 2d 1108, 1115 (1988); Edwards v. Scroggy, 849 F. 2d 204, 211 (1988).5 The conflict between its view and that of the Tenth Circuit, see Cartwright v. Maynard, 822 F. 2d 1477, 1480 (1987) (en banc), is itself evidence that it was not unreasonable to believe in 1985 that Stephens would govern the result in this case. See Butler v. McKellar, 494 U. S., at 415. Nor, in light of my analysis, can the Fifth Circuit’s opinion be dismissed as having “no arguable basis to support” the view expressed, ante, at 231.
III
In sum, I do not think that precedent in 1985 dictated the rule that weighing a vague aggravating circumstance neees-*248sarily violates the Eighth Amendment as long as there is a finding of at least one other, unobjectionable, aggravating circumstance. It follows that I think it .was reasonable to believe that neither reweighing nor harmless-error review would be required in that situation.

 There are only hints in its opinion of the reason this distinction made a difference. See 822 F. 2d, at 1480-1481 (individualized sentencing); id., at 1485 (narrowing).

 The mere fact that an aggravating circumstance inclines a senteneer more towards imposing the death penalty cannot, of course, violate the Eighth Amendment. I therefore read the majority opinion to object to the weighing of vague aggravating circumstances only because they skew the operation of the scheme by their random application from case to case.

 1 say vague and not, as the majority does, invalid, see ante, at 230,231. There might indeed have been invalid aggravating circumstances whose consideration, even with one or more valid ones, would have tainted an ensuing death sentence in any reasonable view in 1985. Thus, it would have been unreasonable to believe in 1985 that a capital sentence could stand, without more, if the sentencer had been instructed, say, to consider constitutionally protected behavior in aggravation. See Barclay v. Florida, 463 U. S. 939, 956 (1983) (plurality opinion); Zant v. Stephens, 462 U. S. 862, 885 (1983). But I would apply that proposition to weighing and nonweighing States alike.

 Because, in this case, valid aggravating circumstances remained, I need not discuss respondents’ argument that it was reasonable to believe in 1985 that the Mississippi murder statute performed all constitutionally required narrowing in the guilt phase of petitioner’s trial. Cf. Lowenfield v. Phelps, 484 U. S. 231 (1988).

 This was after we announced Cartwright. The Fifth Circuit distinguished that case in the same way the Supreme Court of Mississippi distinguished Cartwright in Clemons. See Stringer, 862 F. 2d, at 1113; Edwards, 849 F. 2d, at 211, n. 7.