230
Opinion of the Court
receive it under all the circumstances of the case. Instead, under the Georgia scheme, " '[i]n making the decision as to the penalty, the factfinder takes into consideration all circumstances before it from both the guilt-innocence and the sentence phases of the trial. These circumstances relate both to the offense and the defendant.' " Zant v. Stephens, 462 U. S. 862, 872 (1983) (quoting the response of the Georgia Supreme Court to our certified question).
That Mississippi is a weighing State only gives emphasis to the requirement that aggravating factors be defined with some degree of precision. By express language in Zant we left open the possibility that in a weighing State infection of the process with an invalid aggravating factor might require invalidation of the death sentence. Id., at 890. Although we later held in Clemons v. Mississippi that under such circumstances a state appellate court could reweigh the aggravating and mitigating circumstances or undertake harmless-error analysis, we have not suggested that the Eighth Amendment permits the state appellate court in a weighing State to affirm a death sentence without a thorough analysis of the role an invalid aggravating factor played in the sentencing process.
We require close appellate scrutiny of the import and effect of invalid aggravating factors to implement the well-established Eighth Amendment requirement of individualized sentencing determinations in death penalty cases. See Zant, supra, at 879; Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 U. S. 104, 110-112 (1982); Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U. S. 586, 601-605 (1978) (plurality opinion); Roberts v. Louisiana, 431 U. S. 633, 636- 637 (1977); Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U. S. 153, 197 (1976) ( joint opinion of Stewart, Powell, and Stevens, JJ.); Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U. S. 280, 303-304 (1976) (plurality opinion). In order for a state appellate court to affirm a death sentence after the sentencer was instructed to consider an invalid factor, the court must determine what the sentencer would have done absent the factor. Otherwise, the defend-
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