402
Opinion of the Court
should consider all of the circumstances of the crime in deciding whether to impose the death penalty. See Tuilaepa, 512 U. S., at 976.
What is of common importance at the eligibility and selection stages is that "the process is neutral and principled so as to guard against bias or caprice in the sentencing decision." Id., at 973. So long as victim vulnerability and victim impact factors are used to direct the jury to the individual circumstances of the case, we do not think that principle will be disturbed. Because factors 3(B) and 3(C) directed the jury to the evidence specific to this case, we do not think that they were overbroad in a way that offended the Constitution.
B
The error in this case, if any, rests in loose drafting of the nonstatutory aggravating factors; as we have made clear, victim vulnerability and victim impact evidence are appropriate subjects for the capital sentencer's consideration. Assuming that use of these loosely drafted factors was indeed error, we conclude that the error was harmless.
Harmless-error review of a death sentence may be performed in at least two different ways. An appellate court may choose to consider whether absent an invalid factor, the jury would have reached the same verdict or it may choose instead to consider whether the result would have been the same had the invalid aggravating factor been precisely defined. See Clemons v. Mississippi, 494 U. S. 738, 753-754 (1990). The Fifth Circuit chose to perform the first sort of analysis, and ultimately concluded that the jury would have returned a recommendation of death even had it not considered the two supposedly invalid nonstatutory aggravating factors:
"After removing the offensive non-statutory aggravating factors from the balance, we are left with two
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