242
Souter, J., dissenting
wantonly vile, horrible and inhuman" circumstance in Godfrey, 486 U. S., at 363-364. The Court rejected Oklahoma's argument that Cartwright's sentence was adequately supported by the unchallenged aggravating circumstance, observing that Oklahoma's highest court had a practice of not attempting to "save the death penalty when one of several aggravating circumstances . . . was found invalid," id., at 365. (Instead, that court would simply commute any death sentence imposed after finding an "invalid" aggravating circumstance into a sentence of life imprisonment, see id., at 359.) The Court said that "the Court of Appeals cannot be faulted for not itself undertaking what the state courts themselves refused to do," id., at 365.
Cartwright was followed by Clemons v. Mississippi, 494 U. S. 738 (1990). Like Oklahoma, Mississippi is a weighing State, and a jury had returned a death verdict finding that two aggravating circumstances were present (one of which had been that the crime was "especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel"), and finding that these two aggravating circumstances outweighed any mitigating circumstances. The Supreme Court of Mississippi had affirmed, distinguishing Cartwright on the ground, inter alia, that, while Oklahoma had no procedure for salvaging a death sentence resting in part on a vague aggravating circumstance, there was an established procedure in Mississippi. "[W]hen one aggravating circumstance is found to be invalid . . . , a remaining valid aggravating circumstance will nonetheless support the death penalty verdict." 494 U. S., at 743-744 (internal quotation marks omitted). In this Court, Clemons argued that where a jury had originally imposed a death sentence, the Constitution demanded resentencing by a jury whenever a state appellate court found that the jury had considered an unconstitutionally vague aggravating circumstance. Id., at 744. This Court rejected the argument, saying that nothing in the Constitution forbade a state appellate court to salvage an unconstitutional sentence, id., at 745-750, although, at a
Page: Index Previous 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007