530
Opinion of the Court
ida, 428 U. S. 242 (1976), and if the judge were obligated to accord some deference to it." Baldwin, 472 U. S., at 382 (emphasis added); see also id., at 386, n. 8 ("express[ing] no view" on the same point). This highly tentative expression, far from showing that Baldwin "dictate[s]" the result in Espinosa, see Sawyer v. Smith, 497 U. S., at 235, suggests just the opposite. Indeed, in Baldwin the Chief Justice, who believed that Alabama's scheme did contemplate that the trial judge would consider the jury's "sentence," nonetheless held the scheme constitutional. 472 U. S., at 392 (opinion concurring in judgment).
The Supreme Court decisions relied upon most heavily by petitioner are Godfrey v. Georgia, 446 U. S. 420 (1980); Maynard v. Cartwright, 486 U. S. 356 (1988); and Clemons v. Mississippi, 494 U. S. 738 (1990). In Godfrey, we held that Georgia's "outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible and inhuman" aggravator was impermissibly vague, reasoning that there was nothing in the words "outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible and inhuman" "that implies any inherent restraint on the arbitrary and capricious infliction of the death sentence," and concluded that these terms alone "gave the jury no guidance." 446 U. S., at 428-429 (plurality opinion). Similarly, in Maynard v. Cartwright, applied retroactively to February 1985 in Stringer v. Black, 503 U. S. 222 (1992), we held that Oklahoma's HAC aggravator, which is identically worded to Florida's HAC aggravator, was impermissibly vague because the statute gave no more guidance than the vague aggravator at issue in Godfrey and the sentencing jury was not given a limiting instruction. 486 U. S., at 363-364.
Although Godfrey and Maynard support the proposition that vague aggravators must be sufficiently narrowed to avoid arbitrary imposition of the death penalty, these cases, and others, demonstrate that the failure to instruct the sentencing jury properly with respect to the aggravator does not automatically render a defendant's sentence unconstitutional. We have repeatedly indicated that a sentencing
Page: Index Previous 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007