Harris v. Alabama, 513 U.S. 504, 10 (1995)

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Cite as: 513 U. S. 504 (1995)

Opinion of the Court

judge, was presented with an invalid aggravating factor. We summarily reversed the death sentence, explaining that "Florida has essentially split the weighing process in two. Initially, the jury weighs aggravating and mitigating circumstances, and the result of that weighing process is then in turn weighed within the trial court's process of weighing aggravating and mitigating circumstances." Id., at 1082. Error is committed when the jury considers an invalid factor and its verdict is in turn considered by the judge: "This kind of indirect weighing of an invalid aggravating factor creates the same potential for arbitrariness as the direct weighing of an invalid aggravating factor, and the result, therefore, was error." Ibid. (citation omitted). Such consequential error attaches whenever the jury recommendation is considered in the process, not only when it is given great weight by the judge.

We have observed in the Florida context that permitting the trial judge to reject the jury's advisory verdict may afford capital defendants "a second chance for life with the trial judge," Dobbert, 432 U. S., at 296. In practice, however, Alabama's sentencing scheme has yielded some ostensibly surprising statistics. According to the Alabama Prison Project, there have been only 5 cases in which the judge rejected an advisory verdict of death, compared to 47 instances where the judge imposed a death sentence over a jury recommendation of life. Statistics compiled by the Alabama Prison Project (Nov. 29, 1994) (lodged with the Clerk of this Court). But these numbers do not tell the whole story. We do not know, for instance, how many cases in which a jury recommendation of life imprisonment is adopted would have ended differently had the judge not been required to consider the jury's advice. Without such a subjective look into the minds of the decisionmakers, the deceptively objective numbers afford at best an incomplete picture. Even assuming that these statistics reflect a true view of capital sentencing in Alabama, they say little about

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