530
Opinion of the Court
We answer yes to the first question and no to the second, and therefore vacate the judgment of the Supreme Court of Florida and remand.
I
On New Year's Eve 1981, petitioner Dennis Sochor met a woman in a bar in Broward County, Florida. Sochor tried to rape her after they had left together, and her resistance angered him to the point of choking her to death. He was indicted for first-degree murder and kidnaping and, after a jury trial, was found guilty of each offense.
At the penalty hearing, aggravating and mitigating evidence was offered, and the jury was instructed on the possibility of finding four aggravating circumstances, two of which were that
"the crime for which the defendant is to be sentenced was especially wicked, evil, atrocious or cruel, and [that] the crime for which the defendant is to be sentenced was committed in a cold, calculated and premeditated manner, without any pretense of moral or legal justification." App. 326-327.
The judge then explained to the jury that it could find certain statutory and any nonstatutory mitigating circumstances, which were to be weighed against any aggravating ones. By a vote of 10 to 2, the jury recommended the death penalty for the murder. The trial court adopted the jury's recommendation, finding all four aggravating circumstances as defined in the jury instructions and no circumstances in mitigation.
The Supreme Court of Florida affirmed. 580 So. 2d 595 (1991). It declined to reverse for unconstitutional vagueness in the trial judge's instruction that the jury could find as an aggravating factor that "the crime for which the defendant is to be sentenced was especially wicked, evil, atrocious or cruel" (hereinafter, for brevity, the heinousness factor, after the statute's words "heinous, atrocious, or
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