Cite as: 503 U. S. 222 (1992)
Souter, J., dissenting
the post-1985 decisions that, implicitly at least, announced the rule petitioner invokes, infra, Part I-B. Finally, I will enquire whether this rule was dictated by the pre-1985 decisions, infra, Part II.
A
The cases determining the apposite law before 1985 start with Godfrey v. Georgia, 446 U. S. 420 (1980). Under the Georgia sentencing scheme, a defendant is given a life sentence unless the jury finds one or more aggravating circumstances. Once the jury does that, aggravating circumstances no longer play a role: the jury is instructed to determine whether the defendant should receive a death sentence by considering all the evidence in aggravation and in mitigation. The jury is not instructed to weigh any aggravating circumstances against mitigating circumstances. In Godfrey, a Georgia jury had returned a death verdict on the strength of just one aggravating circumstance, that the murder was "outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible and inhuman." Id., at 426 (plurality opinion). Saying that "[a] person of ordinary sensibility could fairly categorize almost every murder as 'outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible and inhuman,' " id., at 428-429, this Court held that this circumstance failed to impose any "restraint on the arbitrary and capricious infliction of the death sentence," id., at 428. Accordingly, Georgia's sentencing scheme, as applied, violated the Eighth Amendment in the same way as the scheme struck down in Furman v. Georgia, 408 U. S. 238 (1972): it failed to "provide a meaningful basis for distinguishing the few cases in which [the penalty] is imposed from the many cases in which it is not." 446 U. S., at 427 (internal quotation marks omitted).
After Godfrey came Zant v. Stephens, 462 U. S. 862 (1983), arising from a Georgia jury's death verdict based on a showing of several aggravating circumstances, one of which was that respondent had "a substantial history of serious assaultive criminal convictions," id., at 866. Shortly after respond-
239
Page: Index Previous 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007