232
Opinion of the Court
Jackson, 862 F. 2d, at 1115, but of critical importance. In a nonweighing State, so long as the sentencing body finds at least one valid aggravating factor, the fact that it also finds an invalid aggravating factor does not infect the formal process of deciding whether death is an appropriate penalty. Assuming a determination by the state appellate court that the invalid factor would not have made a difference to the jury's determination, there is no constitutional violation resulting from the introduction of the invalid factor in an earlier stage of the proceedings. But when the sentencing body is told to weigh an invalid factor in its decision, a reviewing court may not assume it would have made no difference if the thumb had been removed from death's side of the scale. When the weighing process itself has been skewed, only constitutional harmless-error analysis or reweighing at the trial or appellate level suffices to guarantee that the defendant received an individualized sentence. This clear principle emerges not from any single case, as the dissent would require, post, at 243-247, but from our long line of authority setting forth the dual constitutional criteria of precise and individualized sentencing. Thus, the principal difference between the sentencing systems of Mississippi and Georgia, the different role played by aggravating factors in the two States, underscores the applicability of Godfrey and Maynard to the Mississippi system.
2
Although it made no similar argument in Clemons itself, the State contends now that before Clemons it was reasonable to believe there was no constitutional requirement to define aggravating factors with precision in the Mississippi system. It points to the fact that in order for a jury to find a defendant guilty of capital murder it must find that the crime fits within the narrow and precise statutory definition of that offense. Any additional consideration of aggravating factors during the sentencing phase, under this view, is of no constitutional significance because the requisite differentia-
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