482
Blackmun, J., dissenting
onstration that there exists a narrowing way to apply the contested language. The entire point of the challenge is that the language's susceptibility to a variety of interpretations is what makes it (facially) unconstitutional. To save the statute, the State must provide a construction that, on its face, reasonably can be expected to be applied in a consistent and meaningful way so as to provide the sentencer with adequate guidance. The metaphor "cold-blooded" does not do this.
I begin with "ordinary usage." The majority points out that the first definition in Webster's Dictionary under the entry "cold-blooded" is " 'marked by absence of warm feelings: without consideration, compunction, or clemency.' " Ante, at 472, quoting Webster's Third New International Dictionary 442 (1986). If Webster's' rendition of the term's ordinary meaning is to be credited, then Idaho has singled out murderers who act without warm feelings: those who act without consideration, compunction, or clemency. Obviously that definition is no more illuminating than the adjective "pitiless" as defined by the majority. What murderer does act with consideration or compunction or clemency? 3
In its eagerness to boil the phrase down to a serviceable core, the majority virtually ignores the very definition it cites. Instead, the majority comes up with a hybrid all its own—"without feeling or sympathy"—and then goes one step further, asserting that because the term "cold-blooded" so obviously means "without feeling," it cannot refer as ordinarily understood to murderers who "kill with anger, jealousy, revenge, or a variety of other emotions." Ante, at 476. That is incorrect. In everyday parlance, the term "cold-blooded" routinely is used to describe killings that fall outside the majority's definition. In the first nine weeks of this
3 Cf. State v. Charboneau, 116 Idaho 129, 172, 774 P. 2d 299, 342 (1989) (Bistline, J., dissenting) ("What first degree murderer fails to show 'callous disregard for human life'? I suppose this would be the 'pitiful' slayer, who, prior to delivering the fatal blow, tells the victim, 'Excuse me, pardon me, I know it's inconvenient, but I must now take your life' ").
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