534
Opinion of the Court
sentence is determined by the trial judge" (emphasis added)); id., at 251 (the trial court is "[t]he sentencing authority in Florida"); id., at 252 ("[T]he sentence is determined by the judge rather than by the jury"); id., at 260 (White, J., concurring in judgment). We even distinguished the Florida scheme from the Georgia scheme on the ground that "in Florida the sentence is determined by the trial judge rather than by the jury." Id., at 252 ( joint opinion) (emphasis added). Some eight years later, just two years before petitioner's conviction became final, we continued to describe the judge as the sentencer. See Spaziano v. Florida, 468 U. S. 447 (1984); see also Barclay v. Florida, 463 U. S. 939, 952-954 (1983) (plurality opinion); id., at 962 (Stevens, J., concurring in judgment). (Although he now believes the jury is a cosentencer, at the time Lambrix's conviction became final Justice Stevens had explained that "the sentencing authority [is] the jury in Georgia, the judge in Florida." Ibid.) It would not have been unreasonable to rely on what we had said in Proffitt, Spaziano, and Barclay—that the trial court was the sentencer—and to conclude that where the sentencer considered properly narrowed aggravators there was simply no error under Godfrey or Maynard. The Florida Supreme Court and the Eleventh Circuit held precisely that in 1989, see Smalley v. State, 546 So. 2d 720, 722; Bertolotti v. Dugger, 883 F. 2d 1503, 1526-1527, cert. denied, 497 U. S. 1032 (1990); and in 1985 the Eleventh Circuit foresaw the possibility of such a holding: "[Spaziano's] reasoning calls into question whether any given error in such a merely 'advisory' proceeding should be considered to be of constitutional magnitude." Proffitt v. Wainwright, 756 F. 2d 1500, 1502. (3) The trial court's weighing of properly narrowed aggravators and mitigators was sufficiently independent of the jury to cure any error in the jury's consideration of a vague aggravator. Although the Florida Supreme Court had interpreted its statute—which provided that the judge was the sentencer, Fla. Stat. § 921.141(3) (Supp. 1992), and that the
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