988
Blackmun, J., dissenting
the killing was an aggravating factor, because the victim was killed in her own home, in a public bar, in a city park, or in a remote location.14 In short, because neither the California Legislature nor the California courts ever have articulated a limiting construction of this term, prosecutors have been permitted to use the "circumstances of the crime" as an aggravating factor to embrace the entire spectrum of facts present in virtually every homicide—something this Court condemned in Godfrey v. Georgia, 446 U. S. 420 (1980). See Maynard v. Cartwright, 486 U. S., at 363 (the Court "plainly rejected the submission that a particular set of facts surrounding a murder, however shocking they might be, were enough in themselves, and without some narrowing principle to apply to those facts, to warrant the imposition of the death penalty").15
The defendant's age as a factor, applied inconsistently and erratically, similarly fails to channel the jurors' discretion. In practice, prosecutors and trial judges have applied this factor to defendants of virtually every age: in their teens, twenties, thirties, forties, and fifties at the time of the
No. S004607, ibid. (stabbing); People v. Scott, Cal. Sup. Ct. No. S010334, ibid. (fire).
14 People v. Anderson, Cal. Sup. Ct. No. S004385, id., at 18, n. 31 (victim's home); People v. Freeman, Cal. Sup. Ct. No. S004787, ibid. (public bar); People v. Ashmus, Cal. Sup. Ct. No. S004723, ibid. (city park); People v. Carpenter, Cal. Sup. Ct. No. S004654, ibid. (forested area); People v. Comtois, Cal. Sup. Ct. No. S017116, ibid. (remote, isolated location).
15 Although we have required that jurors be allowed to consider "as a mitigating factor, any aspect of a defendant's character or record and any of the circumstances of the offense that the defendant proffers as a basis for a sentence less than death," Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U. S. 586, 604 (1978) (emphasis in original), we have never approved such unrestricted consideration of a circumstance in aggravation. Similarly, while we approved the Georgia capital sentencing scheme, which permits jurors to consider all the circumstances of the offense and the offender, we did so in the context of a system in which aggravators performed no function beyond the eligibility decision. See Zant v. Stephens, 462 U. S. 862, 873-874 (1983).
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