stating that “[eligibility factors almost of necessity require an answer to a question with a factual nexus to the crime or the defendant so as to ‘make rationally reviewable the process for imposing a sentence of death,’ ” while “[t]he selection decision ... requires individualized sentencing and must be expansive enough to accommodate relevant mitigating evidence so as to assure an assessment of the defendant’s culpability” (quoting Arave v. Creech, 507 U.S. 463, 471, 113 S.Ct. 1534, 123 L.Ed.2d 188 (1993))
How later courts described this case
- stating that “[eligibility factors almost of necessity require an answer to a question with a factual nexus to the crime or the defendant so as to ‘make rationally reviewable the process for imposing a sentence of death,’ ” while “[t]he selection decision ... requires individualized sentencing and must be expansive enough to accommodate relevant mitigating evidence so as to assure an assessment of the defendant’s culpability” (quoting Arave v. Creech, 507 U.S. 463, 471, 113 S.Ct. 1534, 123 L.Ed.2d 188 (1993))
- stating that “[e]ligibility factors almost of necessity require an answer to a question with a factual nexus to the crime or the defendant so as to ‘make rationally reviewable the process for imposing a sentence of death,’ ” while “[t]he selection decision . . . requires individualized sentencing and must be expansive enough to accommodate relevant mitigating evidence so as to assure an assessment of the defendant’s culpability” (quoting Arave v. Creech, 507 U.S. 463, 471 (1993))
- holding that “[a] capital sentencer need not be instructed how to weigh any particular fact in the capital sentencing decision” and reaffirming that “the sentencer may be given ‘unbridled discretion in determining whether the death penalty should be imposed after it has found that the defendant is a member of the class made eligible for that penalty’”
- explaining that a defendant is eligible for the death penalty only after the trier of fact convicts him of homicide and finds at least one aggravating circumstance, and noting that the trier may find such circumstance at the guilt phase rather than the punishment phase
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Justice & alia,
concurring.
It is my view that once a State has adopted a methodology to narrow the eligibility for the death penalty, thereby ensuring that its imposition is not “freakish,” Wainwright v. Goode, 464 U. S. 78, 87 (1983) (per curiam), the distinctive procedural requirements of the Eighth Amendment have been exhausted. See Walton v. Arizona, 497 U. S. 639, 669-673 (1990) (Scalia, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment). Today’s decision adheres to our cases which acknowledge additional requirements, but since it restricts their further expansion it moves in the right direction. For that reason, and without abandoning my prior views, I join the opinion of the Court.