Cite as: 512 U. S. 967 (1994)
Blackmun, J., dissenting
The special circumstances themselves encompass many of the factors generally recognized as aggravating, including multiple-murder convictions; commission of the murder in relation to another felony; the "especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel" nature of the murder; and the relevant identity of the victim (as a law enforcement officer, a witness to a crime, a judge, a prosecutor, or a public official). The statute, therefore, invites the jurors to speculate about, and give aggravating weight to, unspecified circumstances apart from these.
Nor has the California Supreme Court attempted to limit or guide this ranging inquiry. Far from it. That court has concluded that the "circumstances of the crime" factor extends beyond "merely the immediate temporal and spatial circumstances of the crime," People v. Edwards, 54 Cal. 3d 787, 833, 819 P. 2d 436, 465 (1991), and leaves "the sentencer free to evaluate the evidence in accordance with his or her own subjective values," People v. Tuilaepa, 4 Cal. 4th 569, 595, 842 P. 2d 1142, 1158 (1992) (case below). The court has even warned that it has not yet "explore[d] the outer reaches of the evidence admissible as a circumstance of the crime." People v. Edwards, 54 Cal. 3d, at 835, 819 P. 2d, at 467. Thus, the "unique opportunity for racial prejudice to operate but remain undetected," Turner v. Murray, 476 U. S. 28, 35 (1986), exists unchecked in the California capital sentencing scheme. This does not instill confidence in the jury's decision to impose the death penalty on petitioner Tuilaepa, who is Samoan, and whose victim was white.
II
Although the Court today rejects a well-founded facial challenge to 3 of the 11 factors that permit California jurors to select from among capital defendants those who will receive the death penalty, it has not given the California system a clean bill of health. Its unwillingness to conclude that these factors are valid on their face leaves the door open to a challenge to the application of one of these factors in such
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