# Tuilaepa v. California

> Supreme Court of the United States · June 30, 1994 · 512 U.S. 967

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9433058

## Case

- **Full name:** Tuilaepa v. California
- **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States
- **Decided:** June 30, 1994
- **Citations:** 512 U.S. 967; 114 S. Ct. 2630; 129 L. Ed. 2d 750; 1994 U.S. LEXIS 5084
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Souter
- **Judges:** Kennedy, Rehnquist, O'Connor, Scalia, Souter, Thomas, Stevens, Ginsburg, Blackmun
- **Cited by:** 794 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/9433058

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- 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 individu…
- 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 indiv…
- 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 …
- 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
- holding that challenge to portion of California’s death penalty regime requiring jury to consider circumstances of the crime was merit less because it was at odds with settled principles of capital jurisprudence that circumstances of the crime must be considered

## Opinion text

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 *981 susceptible 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.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9433058. Public record. Not legal advice.