Cite as: 506 U. S. 461 (1993)
Thomas, J., concurring
at 327 (citing Gregg, 428 U. S., at 197-199, 203 ( joint opinion), and 222 (White, J., concurring in judgment)). Cf. Mc-Cleskey v. Kemp, 481 U. S., at 311 (discussing the benefits to the defendant of discretionary leniency). Thus, the dissent suggests that once the State has sufficiently narrowed the class of death-eligible murderers, the jury's discretion to select those individuals favored to live must remain effectively unbounded. See post, at 513-515, 518-519. It turns reason on its head, however, to argue that just because we have approved sentencing systems that continue to permit juries to exercise a degree of discretionary leniency, the Eighth Amendment necessarily requires that that discretion be unguided and unlimited with respect to "the class of murderers subject to capital punishment." To withhold the death penalty out of sympathy for a defendant who is a member of a favored group is no different from a decision to impose the penalty on the basis of negative bias, and it matters not how narrow the class of death-eligible defendants or crimes. Surely that is exactly what the petitioners and the Legal Defense Fund argued in Woodson and Roberts. See n. 7, supra. It is manifest that " 'the power to be lenient [also] is the power to discriminate.' " McCleskey v. Kemp, supra, at 312 (quoting K. Davis, Discretionary Justice 170 (1973)). See also Roberts, 428 U. S., at 346 (White, J., dissenting) ("It is undeniable that the unfettered discretion of the jury to save the defendant from death was a major contributing factor in the developments which led us to invalidate the death penalty in Furman v. Georgia").9
9 The Texas special issues involved here did a considerably better job of rationalizing sentencing discretion than even the elaborate Georgia system approved in Gregg, where juries still retained power "to return a sentence of life, rather than death, for no reason whatever, simply based upon their own subjective notions of what is right and what is wrong." Woodson, 428 U. S., at 314-315 (Rehnquist, J., dissenting). As a regrettable but predictable consequence of Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U. S. 302 (1989), the Texas Legislature has since amended its sentencing statute, which now invites the jury to react subjectively to "all" circumstances, including "the
495
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