474
Opinion of the Court
plication . . . are by no means so vague and overbroad as to leave the discretion of the sentencing authority unfettered").
The language at issue here is no less "clear and objective" than the language sustained in Walton. Whether a defendant "relishes" or derives "pleasure" from his crime arguably may be easier to determine than whether he acts without feeling or sympathy, since enjoyment is an affirmative mental state, whereas the cold-bloodedness inquiry in a sense requires the sentencer to find a negative. But we do not think so subtle a distinction has constitutional significance. The Osborn limiting construction, like the one upheld in Walton, defines a state of mind that is ascertainable from surrounding facts. Accordingly, we decline to invalidate the "utter disregard" circumstance on the ground that the Idaho Supreme Court's limiting construction is insufficiently "objective."
Of course, it is not enough for an aggravating circumstance, as construed by the state courts, to be determinate. Our precedents make clear that a State's capital sentencing scheme also must "genuinely narrow the class of persons eligible for the death penalty." Zant v. Stephens, 462 U. S. 862, 877 (1983). When the purpose of a statutory aggravating circumstance is to enable the sentencer to distinguish those who deserve capital punishment from those who do not, the circumstance must provide a principled basis for doing so. See Jeffers, supra, at 776; Godfrey, 446 U. S., at 433. If the sentencer fairly could conclude that an aggravating circumstance applies to every defendant eligible for the death penalty, the circumstance is constitutionally infirm. See Cartwright, supra, at 364 (invalidating aggravating circumstance that "an ordinary person could honestly believe" described every murder); Godfrey, supra, at 428-429 ("A person of ordinary sensibility could fairly characterize almost every murder as 'outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible and inhuman' ").
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