Cite as: 520 U. S. 518 (1997)
Opinion of the Court
Court reviewed sentences for consistency. Proffitt, 428 U. S., at 253 ( joint opinion of Stewart, Powell, and Stevens, JJ.); id., at 260-261 (opinion of White, J., joined by the Chief Justice and Rehnquist, J.). (In Proffitt itself, incidentally, the jury had not been instructed on an appropriately narrowed HAC aggravator, see Proffitt v. Wainwright, 685 F. 2d 1227, 1264, n. 57 (CA11 1982), cert. denied, 464 U. S. 1002 (1983).) From what was said in Proffitt it would, as the en banc Eleventh Circuit noted, "sensibly follow that the judge's proper review of the sentence cures any risk of arbitrariness occasioned by the jury's consideration of an unconstitutionally vague aggravating circumstance." Glock v. Singletary, 65 F. 3d 878, 886 (1995), cert. denied, 519 U. S. 888 (1996). It could have been argued, of course, as Justice Stevens contends, see post, at 543 (dissenting opinion), that prior constitutional error by a sentencing-determining jury would make a difference, but both the conclusion and the premise of that argument were debatable: not only whether it would make a difference, but even (as the succeeding point demonstrates) whether there was any constitutional error by a sentencing-determining jury. (2) There was no error for the trial judge to cure, since under Florida law the trial court, not the jury, was the sentencer. In Espinosa we concluded, in effect, that the jury was at least in part a cosentencer along with the trial court. That determination can fairly be traced to our opinion in Sochor v. Florida, 504 U. S. 527 (1992), decided just three weeks earlier, where we explained that under Florida law the trial court "is at least a constituent part of 'the sentencer,' " implying that the jury was that as well. Id., at 535-536. That characterization is in considerable tension with our pre-1986 view. In Proffitt, for example, after considering Tedder v. State, 322 So. 2d 908 (Fla. 1975), on which Espinosa primarily relied, the Court determined that the trial court was the sentencer. E. g., 428 U. S., at 249 ( joint opinion of Stewart, Powell, and Stevens, JJ.) ("[T]he actual
533
Page: Index Previous 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007