Cite as: 512 U. S. 967 (1994)
Stevens, J., concurring in judgment
susceptible to mathematical precision; they must depend for their requisite clarity on embodying a "common-sense core of meaning," as Justice White put it in Jurek v. Texas, 428 U. S. 262, 279 (1976) (concurring opinion). Taking factor (b) to be essentially propositional, as the Court uses the term, ante, at 974-975, I find it is sufficiently clear to pass muster; and I agree with the Court's analysis of factor (i) and the challenged portion of factor (a), neither of which is framed as a proposition.
Justice Stevens, with whom Justice Ginsburg joins, concurring in the judgment.
As these cases come to us they present a question that the Court answered in Zant v. Stephens, 462 U. S. 862 (1983). California, like Georgia, has provided a procedure for determining whether a defendant found guilty of murder is eligible for the death penalty. Petitioners have not challenged the constitutionality of that procedure or its application in these cases. Accordingly, our decision rests on the same assumption that we made in Zant, namely, that the statutory procedure for determining eligibility adequately confines the class of persons eligible for the death penalty to a narrow category in which there is a special justification for "the imposition of a more severe sentence on the defendant compared to others found guilty of murder." Id., at 877.
The question is whether, in addition to adequately narrowing the class of death-eligible defendants, the State must channel the jury's sentencing discretion when it is deciding whether to impose the death sentence on an eligible defendant by requiring the trial judge to characterize relevant sentencing factors as aggravating or mitigating. In Zant we held that the incorrect characterization of a relevant factor as an aggravating factor did not prejudice the defendant; it follows, I believe, that the failure to characterize factors such as the age of the defendant or the circumstances of the crime as either aggravating or mitigating is also unobjectionable.
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