524
Stevens, J., dissenting
III
If the Court correctly held in Spaziano that the Constitution's concerns with regularity and fairness do not bar judges from imposing death sentences over contrary jury verdicts, one would at least expect the Eighth Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to require that such schemes maintain strict standards to regularize and constrain the judge's discretion. The Court today refuses to impose any standard, holding that to do so would be "micromanagement." Ante, at 512. But this case involves far more than a mundane administrative detail.
Alabama stands alone among the States in its refusal to constrain its judges' power to condemn defendants over contrary jury verdicts. The Florida statute upheld in Spaziano, as interpreted by the Florida Supreme Court, requires the prosecutor to satisfy a more stringent standard before the judge than before the jury, prohibiting a judicial override unless the facts supporting the death sentence are "so clear and convincing that virtually no reasonable person could differ." Tedder v. State, 322 So. 2d 908, 910 (1975). If that standard is satisfied, a judge may rationally presume that the jury's verdict did not fairly reflect the judgment of the community. Delaware and Indiana impose similar requirements for overrides. See Pennell v. State, 604 A. 2d 1368, 1377-1378 (Del. 1992); Martinez-Chavez v. State, 534 N. E. 2d 731, 735 (Ind. 1989).
We have repeatedly cited the Tedder standard with approval, suggesting that the Constitution requires such a constraint on a jury override provision. See Spaziano, 468 U. S., at 465; Dobbert v. Florida, 432 U. S., at 294-295; Proffitt v. Florida, 428 U. S. 242, 252 (1976) ( joint opinion of Stewart, Powell, and Stevens, JJ.). Today the Court dismisses those statements. After Justice Blackmun stated in his opinion for the Court in Spaziano that "[w]e are satisfied that the Florida Supreme Court takes [Tedder] seriously
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