538
Opinion of the Court
ons, and Godfrey cannot be thought to suggest otherwise, because there was no indication in those cases that the state courts had found the facts of the crimes to fall within appropriately narrowed definitions of the aggravators. Before Espinosa, we had never invalidated a death sentence where a court found the challenged aggravator to be within the appellate court's narrowed definition of a facially vague aggravator.
Most of Justice Stevens's dissent is devoted to making a forceful case that Espinosa was a reasonable interpretation of prior law—perhaps even the most reasonable one. But the Teague inquiry—which is applied to Supreme Court decisions that are, one must hope, usually the most reasonable interpretation of prior law—requires more than that. It asks whether Espinosa was dictated by precedent—i. e., whether no other interpretation was reasonable. We think it plain from the above that a jurist considering all the relevant material (and not, like Justice Stevens's dissent, considering only the material that favors the Espinosa result) could reasonably have reached a conclusion contrary to our holding in that case. Indeed, both before and after Lambrix's conviction became final, every court decision we are aware of did so. See, e. g., Smalley v. State, 546 So. 2d, at 722; Proffitt v. Wainwright, 756 F. 2d, at 1502; Bertolotti v. Dugger, 883 F. 2d, at 1527; Sanchez-Velasco v. State, 570 So. 2d 908, 916 (Fla. 1990), cert. denied, 500 U. S. 929 (1991).
It has been suggested that Espinosa was not a new rule because our decision was handed down as a per curiam without oral argument. See, e. g., Glock v. Singletary, 65 F. 3d, at 896, n. 11 (en banc) (Tjoflat, C. J., dissenting). Whatever
opinion). Walton indicated that our precedents provided two distinct and permissible routes to satisfy the Eighth Amendment where the sentencer considered a vague aggravator: a court's finding of the aggravator under a proper limiting construction, or independent reweighing of the circumstances.
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