Brown v. Sanders

(Slip Opinion) OCTOBER TERM, 2005 1

Syllabus

NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is
being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued.
The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been
prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader.
See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

Syllabus

BROWN, WARDEN v. SANDERS

CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR
THE NINTH CIRCUIT

No. 04–980. Argued October 11, 2005—Decided January 11, 2006
In convicting respondent Sanders of, inter alia, first-degree murder, the
jury found four “special circumstances,” each of which rendered him
death eligible under Cal. Penal Code Ann. §190.2. At the penalty
phase, the jury was instructed to consider a list of sentencing factors,
including “[t]he circumstances of the crime . . . and the existence of
any special circumstances found to be true,” §190.3(a), and sentenced
him to death. The State Supreme Court invalidated two of the spe-
cial circumstances on direct appeal, but nonetheless affirmed the
conviction and sentence. The Federal District Court subsequently
denied Sanders habeas relief, rejecting his claim that the jury’s con-
sideration of invalid special circumstances rendered his death sen-
tence unconstitutional. Reversing, the Ninth Circuit applied the
rules for “weighing” States, see Stringer v. Black, 503 U. S. 222,
rather than “non-weighing” States, see Zant v. Stephens, 462 U. S.
862, and found that Sanders had been unconstitutionally deprived of
an individualized death sentence.
Held:
1. The requirement that States limit the class of murderers to
which the death penalty may be applied, Furman v. Georgia, 408
U. S. 238 (per curiam), is usually met when the trier of fact finds at
least one statutory eligibility factor at either the guilt or penalty
phase. Once this narrowing requirement has been satisfied, the sen-
tencer must determine whether an eligible defendant should receive
the death penalty; many States channel this function by specifying
aggravating factors (sometimes identical to the eligibility factors)
that are to be weighed against mitigating considerations. In answer-
ing the question confronted here—what happens when the sentencer
imposes the death penalty after finding a valid eligibility factor, but
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Syllabus

under a scheme in which another eligibility factor is later held inva-
lid—this Court has set forth different rules for so-called weighing and
non-weighing States. In a weighing State, the sentencer could con-
sider as aggravation only specified eligibility factors. Where the sen-
tencer relied on an eligibility factor that was later invalidated, the
sentencer was erroneously invited to count the invalid factor as
weighing in favor of death, thus “skewing” the weighing process,
Stringer, supra, at 232. Such automatic skewing would not necessar-
ily occur in a non-weighing State, however, which permitted the sen-
tencer to consider aggravating factors different from, or in addition
to, the eligibility factors. This weighing/non-weighing scheme seems
needlessly complex and incapable of providing for the full range of
variations. This Court is henceforth guided by the following rule: An
invalidated sentencing factor (whether an eligibility factor or not)
will render the sentence unconstitutional by reason of its adding an
improper element to the aggravation scale in the weighing process
unless one of the other sentencing factors enables the sentencer to
give aggravating weight to the same facts and circumstances. Pp. 3–
9.
2. The jury’s consideration of invalid special circumstances in
Sanders’ case gave rise to no constitutional violation. In California,
the “special circumstances” listed in §190.2 are the eligibility factors
designed to satisfy Furman’s narrowing requirement. If the jury
finds the existence of one of those circumstances, it must “take into
account” a separate list of sentencing factors, including §190.3(a)’s
“circumstances of the crime” factor. That factor has the effect of ren-
dering all the specified factors nonexclusive, thus making California
(in this Court’s prior terminology) a non-weighing State. Setting
aside the weighing/non-weighing dichotomy and applying the more
direct analysis set out here, two of the four special circumstances
were invalidated, but the remaining two are sufficient to satisfy
Furman’s narrowing requirement and alone rendered Sanders death
eligible. Moreover, all of the facts and circumstances admissible to
prove the invalid eligibility factors were also properly adduced as ag-
gravating facts and circumstances under the “circumstances of the
crime” sentencing factor. Even if §190.3(a)’s direction to consider
“the existence of any special circumstances found to be true” placed
special emphasis upon the facts and circumstances relevant to the
invalid factors, that impact “cannot fairly be regarded as a constitu-
tional defect in the sentencing process,” Zant, supra, at 889. Pp. 9–
12.
373 F. 3d 1054, reversed and remanded.

SCALIA, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which ROBERTS,
 Cite as: 546 U. S. ____ (2006) 3

Syllabus

C. J., and O’CONNOR, KENNEDY, and THOMAS, JJ., joined. STEVENS, J.,
filed a dissenting opinion, in which SOUTER, J., joined. BREYER, J., filed
a dissenting opinion, in which GINSBURG, J., joined.
 Cite as: 546 U. S. ____ (2006) 1

Opinion of the Court

NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the
preliminary print of the United States Reports. Readers are requested to
notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Wash-
ington, D. C. 20543, of any typographical or other formal errors, in order
that corrections may be made before the preliminary print goes to press.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
_________________

No. 04–980
_________________

JILL L. BROWN, WARDEN, PETITIONER v. RONALD
L. SANDERS
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF
APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
[January 11, 2006]

JUSTICE SCALIA delivered the opinion of the Court.
We consider the circumstances in which an invalidated
sentencing factor will render a death sentence unconstitu-
tional by reason of its adding an improper element to the
aggravation scale in the jury’s weighing process.
I
Respondent Ronald Sanders and a companion invaded
the home of Dale Boender, where they bound and blind-
folded him and his girlfriend, Janice Allen. Both of the
victims were then struck on the head with a heavy, blunt
object; Allen died from the blow. Sanders was convicted of
first-degree murder, of attempt to murder Boender, and of
robbery, burglary, and attempted robbery.
Sanders’ jury found four “special circumstances” under
California law, each of which independently rendered him
eligible for the death penalty. See Cal. Penal Code Ann.
§190.2 (West Supp. 1995). The trial then moved to a
penalty phase, at which the jury was instructed to con-
sider a list of sentencing factors relating to Sanders’ back-
ground and the nature of the crime, one of which was
“[t]he circumstances of the crime of which the defendant
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Opinion of the Court

was convicted in the present proceeding and the existence
of any special circumstances found to be true.” §190.3(a)
(West 1999). The jury sentenced Sanders to death.
On direct appeal, the California Supreme Court de-
clared invalid two of the four special circumstances found
by the jury. It nonetheless affirmed Sanders’ death sen-
tence, relying on our decision in Zant v. Stephens, 462 U. S.
862 (1983), which, it said, “upheld a death penalty judgment
despite invalidation of one of several aggravating factors.”
People v. Sanders, 51 Cal. 3d 471, 520, 797 P. 2d 561, 589–
590 (1990). It affirmed the conviction and sentence in all
other respects. We denied certiorari. Sanders v. Califor-
nia, 500 U. S. 948 (1991).
Sanders then filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus
pursuant to 28 U. S. C. §2254 in the United States District
Court for the Eastern District of California, arguing, as
relevant here, that the jury’s consideration of invalid
special circumstances rendered his death sentence uncon-
stitutional.1 After Sanders exhausted various state reme-
dies, the District Court denied relief.
The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed.
Sanders v. Woodford, 373 F. 3d 1054 (2004). It concluded
that “the California court erroneously believed that it
could apply the rule of Zant v. Stephens, 462 U. S. 862
(1983)—which is applicable only to nonweighing states—
and uphold the verdict despite the invalidation of two
special circumstances because it was upholding other
special circumstances.” Id., at 1064 (citations omitted).
Finding California to be a weighing State, and applying
the rules we have announced for such States, see Stringer
v. Black, 503 U. S. 222, 232 (1992), the Ninth Circuit con-

——————
1 Because
Sanders filed his habeas petition before April 24, 1996, we
do not apply the substantive review standards required by the Antiter-
rorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, 110 Stat. 1214. See
Lindh v. Murphy, 521 U. S. 320, 327 (1997).
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Opinion of the Court

cluded that California courts could uphold Sanders’ death
sentence only by finding the jury’s use of the invalid spe-
cial circumstances to have been harmless beyond a rea-
sonable doubt or by independently reweighing the sentenc-
ing factors under §190.3. Since, it continued, the state
courts had done neither, Sanders had been unconstitu-
tionally deprived of an “individualized death sentence.”
373 F. 3d, at 1064. We granted certiorari. 544 U. S. _____
(2005).
II
Since Furman v. Georgia, 408 U. S. 238 (1972) (per cu-
riam), we have required States to limit the class of mur-
derers to which the death penalty may be applied. This
narrowing requirement is usually met when the trier of
fact finds at least one statutorily defined eligibility factor
at either the guilt or penalty phase. See Tuilaepa v. Cali-
fornia, 512 U. S. 967, 971–972 (1994).2 Once the narrowing
requirement has been satisfied, the sentencer is called upon
to determine whether a defendant thus found eligible for the
death penalty should in fact receive it. Most States channel
this function by specifying the aggravating factors (some-
times identical to the eligibility factors) that are to be
weighed against mitigating considerations. The issue in the
line of cases we confront here is what happens when the
sentencer imposes the death penalty after at least one
——————
2 Our cases have frequently employed the terms “aggravating circum-
stance” or “aggravating factor” to refer to those statutory factors which
determine death eligibility in satisfaction of Furman’s narrowing
requirement. See, e.g., Tuilaepa v. California, 512 U. S., at 972. This
terminology becomes confusing when, as in this case, a State employs
the term “aggravating circumstance” to refer to factors that play a
different role, determining which defendants eligible for the death
penalty will actually receive that penalty. See Cal. Penal Code Ann.
§190.3 (West 1999). To avoid confusion, this opinion will use the term
“eligibility factor” to describe a factor that performs the constitutional
narrowing function.
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Opinion of the Court

valid eligibility factor has been found, but under a scheme
in which an eligibility factor or a specified aggravating
factor is later held to be invalid.
To answer that question, our jurisprudence has distin-
guished between so-called weighing and non-weighing
States. The terminology is somewhat misleading, since we
have held that in all capital cases the sentencer must be
allowed to weigh the facts and circumstances that argua-
bly justify a death sentence against the defendant’s miti-
gating evidence. See, e.g., Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 U. S.
104, 110 (1982). The terminology was adopted, moreover,
relatively early in the development of our death-penalty
jurisprudence, when we were perhaps unaware of the
great variety of forms that state capital-sentencing legisla-
tion would ultimately take. We identified as “weighing
State[s]” those in which the only aggravating factors
permitted to be considered by the sentencer were the
specified eligibility factors. See, e.g., Parker v. Dugger,
498 U. S. 308, 313, 318–319 (1991) (citing Fla. Stat.
§921.141(3)(b) (1985)); Richmond v. Lewis, 506 U. S. 40,
47 (1992) (quoting Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. §13–703(E)
(1989)). Since the eligibility factors by definition identi-
fied distinct and particular aggravating features, if one of
them was invalid the jury could not consider the facts and
circumstances relevant to that factor as aggravating in
some other capacity—for example, as relevant to an omni-
bus “circumstances of the crime” sentencing factor such as
the one in the present case. In a weighing State, there-
fore, the sentencer’s consideration of an invalid eligibility
factor necessarily skewed its balancing of aggravators
with mitigators, Stringer, 503 U. S., at 232, and required
reversal of the sentence (unless a state appellate court
determined the error was harmless or reweighed the
mitigating evidence against the valid aggravating factors),
ibid.
By contrast, in a non-weighing State—a State that
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Opinion of the Court

permitted the sentencer to consider aggravating factors
different from, or in addition to, the eligibility factors—
this automatic skewing would not necessarily occur. It
would never occur if the aggravating factors were entirely
different from the eligibility factors. Nor would it occur if
the aggravating factors added to the eligibility factors a
category (such as an omnibus “circumstances of the crime”
factor, which is quite common) that would allow the very
facts and circumstances relevant to the invalidated eligi-
bility factor to be weighed in aggravation under a different
rubric. We therefore set forth different rules governing
the consequences of an invalidated eligibility factor in a
non-weighing State.3 The sentencer’s consideration of an
——————
3 JUSTICE BREYER contends that harmless-error review applies in both

weighing and non-weighing States. See post, at 8–12 (dissenting
opinion). It would be strange indeed to discover at this late stage that
our long-held distinction between the two sorts of States for purposes of
reviewing invalid eligibility factors in fact made no difference. Cf., e.g.,
Stringer v. Black, 503 U. S. 222, 232 (1992) (weighing/non-weighing
distinction is “of critical importance”). Not surprisingly, the Courts of
Appeals have uniformly understood that different rules apply to weigh-
ing and non-weighing States, and that harmless-error review is neces-
sary only in the former. See, e.g., Sanders v. Woodford, 373 F. 3d 1054,
1059–1060 (CA9 2004); Flamer v. Delaware, 68 F. 3d 736, 746–749
(CA3 1995); Williams v. Cain, 125 F. 3d 269, 281 (CA5 1997).
Our own cases, moreover, are flatly inconsistent with requiring
harmless-error review in both types of States. As JUSTICE BREYER
notes, post, at 8, Zant v. Stephens, 462 U. S. 862 (1983), did endorse the
Georgia Supreme Court’s holding that attaching the statutory label
“aggravating” to the invalid eligibility factor had an “inconsequential
impact on the jury’s decision regarding the death penalty,” id., at 889
(internal quotation marks omitted). But the core holding is what we
said next: “More importantly, . . . any possible impact cannot fairly be
regarded as a constitutional defect in the sentencing process.” Ibid.
(emphasis added); see also post, at 11–12. Zant must therefore be read
not as holding that any constitutional error was harmless, but as
rejecting respondent’s claim of constitutional error.
Neither Clemons v. Mississippi, 494 U. S. 738 (1990), nor Stringer says
anything to the contrary. JUSTICE BREYER points out that Clemons’
harmless-error discussion focused on the emphasis given to the invalid
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Opinion of the Court

invalid eligibility factor amounts to constitutional error in
a non-weighing State in two situations. First, due process
requires a defendant’s death sentence to be set aside if the
reason for the invalidity of the eligibility factor is that it
“authorizes a jury to draw adverse inferences from conduct
that is constitutionally protected,” or that it “attache[s]
the ‘aggravating’ label to factors that are constitutionally
impermissible or totally irrelevant to the sentencing proc-
ess, . . . or to conduct that actually should militate in favor
of a lesser penalty.” Zant, 462 U. S., at 885. Second, the
death sentence must be set aside if the jury’s considera-
tion of the invalidated eligibility factor allowed it to hear
evidence that would not otherwise have been before it.
See id., at 886; see also Tuggle v. Netherland, 516 U. S. 10,
13–14 (1995) (per curiam).4
——————
factor, rather than on the fact that Mississippi is a weighing State, but
that is hardly relevant: Our discussion of how harmless-error analysis
should be conducted (the issue in the passage from Clemons that
JUSTICE BREYER cites, 494 U. S., at 753–754) says nothing about when
that analysis should be conducted (the issue addressed by the weigh-
ing/non-weighing distinction). On the latter question, Clemons main-
tains the distinction envisioned in Zant, see 462 U. S., at 890–891,
between Georgia (a non-weighing State) and Mississippi (a weighing
State), see Clemons, supra, at 745. Likewise, Stringer specifically
distinguishes between non-weighing States, in which “the fact that [the
jury] also finds an invalid aggravating factor does not infect the formal
process of deciding whether death is an appropriate penalty,” 503 U. S.,
at 232, and weighing States, in which “constitutional harmless-error
analysis or reweighing at the trial or appellate level” is required, ibid.
4 The fact that a sentencer’s consideration of an invalid eligibility

factor in a non-weighing State may nonetheless amount to constitu-
tional error explains Tuggle’s characterization of Zant as holding “that
a death sentence supported by multiple aggravating circumstances
need not always be set aside if one aggravator is found to be invalid,”
516 U. S., at 11 (emphasis added); cf. post, at 12 (BREYER, J., dissent-
ing), as well as our related comment in Clemons that, “[i]n a [non-
weighing] State like Georgia, . . . the invalidation of one aggravating
circumstance does not necessarily require an appellate court to vacate a
death sentence and remand to a jury,” 494 U. S., at 745 (emphasis
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Opinion of the Court

This weighing/non-weighing scheme is accurate as far
as it goes, but it now seems to us needlessly complex and
incapable of providing for the full range of possible varia-
tions. For example, the same problem that gave rise to
our weighing-State jurisprudence would arise if it were a
sentencing factor, and not an eligibility factor, that was
later found to be invalid. The weighing process would just
as clearly have been prima facie “skewed,” and skewed for
the same basic reason: The sentencer might have given
weight to a statutorily or constitutionally invalid aggrava-
tor.5 And the prima facie skewing could in appropriate
cases be shown to be illusory for the same reason that
separates weighing States from non-weighing States: One
of the other aggravating factors, usually an omnibus factor
but conceivably another one, made it entirely proper for
the jury to consider as aggravating the facts and circum-
stances underlying the invalidated factor.
We think it will clarify the analysis, and simplify the
sentence-invalidating factors we have hitherto applied to
non-weighing States, see supra, at 5–6, if we are hence-
forth guided by the following rule: An invalidated sentenc-
ing factor (whether an eligibility factor or not) will render
the sentence unconstitutional by reason of its adding an
improper element to the aggravation scale in the weighing

——————
added); cf. post, at 14–15 (BREYER, J., dissenting).
5 This very problem may have been present in Stringer v. Black, supra.

There, although the Mississippi courts invalidated an aggravating
circumstance—whether the murder was “especially heinous, atrocious,
or cruel,” Miss. Code Ann. §99–19–101(h) (1993 Cum. Supp.)—that was
not one of the specified eligibility factors, see §97–3–19(2) (1994), we
nonetheless treated Mississippi as a weighing State. Since, however,
Mississippi law provided that the jury could not impose a death sen-
tence unless it found the existence of at least one statutory aggravating
factor, see §99–19–101(3)(b) (1993 Cum. Supp.), it could be argued that
the additional aggravating factors were converted into de facto eligibil-
ity factors.
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Opinion of the Court

process6 unless one of the other sentencing factors enables
the sentencer to give aggravating weight to the same facts
and circumstances.
This test is not, as JUSTICE BREYER describes it, “an
inquiry based solely on the admissibility of the underlying
evidence.” Post, at 15 (dissenting opinion). If the presence
of the invalid sentencing factor allowed the sentencer to
consider evidence that would not otherwise have been
before it, due process would mandate reversal without
regard to the rule we apply here. See supra, at 6; see also
n. 6, this page.7 The issue we confront is the skewing that
could result from the jury’s considering as aggravation
properly admitted evidence that should not have weighed
in favor of the death penalty. See, e.g., Stringer, 503 U. S.,
at 232 (“[W]hen the sentencing body is told to weigh an
invalid factor in its decision, a reviewing court may not
assume it would have made no difference if the thumb had
been removed from death’s side of the scale.”). As we have
——————
6 Theremay be other distortions caused by the invalidated factor
beyond the mere addition of an improper aggravating element. For
example, what the jury was instructed to consider as an aggravating
factor might have “actually . . . militate[d] in favor of a lesser penalty,”
Zant, supra, at 885. See supra, at 5–6.
7 This explains the footnote in Clemons v. Mississippi, supra, at 754,

n. 5, on which JUSTICE BREYER relies, see post, at 14. That footnote
addressed petitioner’s argument that the Mississippi Supreme Court
had arbitrarily refused to order jury resentencing, even though it had
done so in an earlier case, Johnson v. State, 511 So. 2d 1333 (1987),
rev’d, 486 U. S. 578 (1988), on remand, 547 So. 2d 59 (1989). We
distinguished the two cases, noting that in Johnson, “the jury was
permitted to consider inadmissible evidence in determining the defen-
dant’s sentence,” 494 U. S., at 754–755, n. 5, whereas in Clemons,
“there is no serious suggestion that the State’s reliance on the [invalid]
factor led to the introduction of any evidence that was not otherwise
admissible in either the guilt or sentencing phases of the proceeding,”
id., at 755, n. 5. The crux of this distinction is that the sentencer’s
consideration of improper evidence is an error distinct from the one at
issue here and in Clemons, to-wit, the jury’s weighing in favor of death
a factor that should not have been part of its calculus.
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Opinion of the Court

explained, such skewing will occur, and give rise to consti-
tutional error, only where the jury could not have given
aggravating weight to the same facts and circumstances
under the rubric of some other, valid sentencing factor.
III
In California, a defendant convicted of first-degree
murder is eligible for the death penalty if the jury finds
one of the “special circumstances” listed in Cal. Penal
Code Ann. §190.2 (West Supp. 2005) to be true. These are
the eligibility factors designed to satisfy Furman. See
People v. Bacigalupo, 6 Cal. 4th 457, 467–468, 862 P. 2d
808, 813 (1993). If the jury finds the existence of one of
the special circumstances, it is instructed to “take into
account” a separate list of sentencing factors describing
aspects of the defendant and the crime. Cal. Penal Code
Ann. §190.3 (West 1999). These sentencing factors in-
clude, as we have said, “[t]he circumstances of the crime
of which the defendant was convicted in the present
proceeding.”
The Court of Appeals held that California is a weighing
State because “ ‘the sentencer [is] restricted to a “weigh-
ing” of aggravation against mitigation’ and ‘the sentencer
[is] prevented from considering evidence in aggravation
other than discrete, statutorily-defined factors.’ ” 373
F. 3d, at 1061 (brackets in original) (quoting Williams v.
Calderon, 52 F. 3d 1465, 1478 (CA9 1995)). The last
statement is inaccurate. The “circumstances of the crime”
factor can hardly be called “discrete.” It has the effect of
rendering all the specified factors nonexclusive, thus
causing California to be (in our prior terminology) a non-
weighing State. Contrary to Sanders’ contention, and
JUSTICE STEVENS’ views in dissent, the mere fact that the
sentencing factors included “the existence of any special
circumstances [eligibility factors] found to be true,” Cal.
Penal Code Ann. §190.3(a), did not make California a
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Opinion of the Court

weighing State. That fact was redundant for purposes of
our weighing jurisprudence because it in no way narrowed
the universe of aggravating facts the jury was entitled to
consider in determining a sentence.8 But leaving aside the
weighing/non-weighing dichotomy and proceeding to the
more direct analysis set forth earlier in this opinion: All of
the aggravating facts and circumstances that the invali-
dated factor permitted the jury to consider were also open
to their proper consideration under one of the other fac-
tors. The erroneous factor could not have “skewed” the
sentence, and no constitutional violation occurred.
More specifically, Sanders’ jury found four special cir-
cumstances to be true: that “[t]he murder was committed
while the defendant was engaged in . . . Robbery,”
§190.2(a)(17)(A) (West Supp. 2005); that it was “commit-
ted while the defendant was engaged in . . . Burglary in
the first or second degree,” §190.2(a)(17)(G); that “[t]he
victim [Allen] was a witness to a crime who was intention-
ally killed for the purpose of preventing . . . her testimony
in any criminal . . . proceeding,” §190.2(a)(10); and that
“[t]he murder was especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel,”
§190.2(a)(14). The California Supreme Court set aside the
burglary-murder special circumstance under state merger
——————
8 JUSTICE STEVENS argues that §190.3(a) may have affected the jury’s
deliberations in other ways, but we rejected each of these theories in
Zant v. Stephens, 462 U. S. 862 (1983). The possibility that the jury
would “coun[t] the nature of the crime twice,” post, at 2 (STEVENS, J.,
dissenting), if it were instructed to consider both the facts of the crime
and the eligibility circumstances was present in Zant. The jury there
was told it could take into account all relevant circumstances, but also—
much like the jury here—was instructed to consider “ ‘any of [the] statu-
tory aggravating circumstances [i.e., eligibility factors] which you find are
supported by the evidence.’ ” 462 U. S., at 866. Likewise, the jury in Zant
might have “give[n] greater weight,” post, at 2 (STEVENS, J., dissenting), to
the facts underlying the eligibility circumstances, but we explicitly held
that any such effect “cannot fairly be regarded as a constitutional defect
in the sentencing process,” 462 U. S., at 889. See infra, at 11–12.
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Opinion of the Court

law because the instructions permitted the jury to find a
burglary (and thus the burglary-murder special circum-
stance) based on Sanders’ intent to commit assault, which
is already an element of homicide, see People v. Wilson, 1
Cal. 3d 431, 439–440, 462 P. 2d 22, 27–28 (1969) (in banc).
51 Cal. 3d, at 517, 797 P. 2d, at 587. The court invalidated
the “heinous, atrocious, or cruel” special circumstance
because it had previously found that to be unconstitution-
ally vague. Id., at 520, 797 P. 2d, at 589 (citing People v.
Superior Court, 31 Cal. 3d 797, 647 P. 2d 76 (1982)).
As the California Supreme Court noted, however, “the
jury properly considered two special circumstances [eligi-
bility factors] (robbery-murder and witness-killing).” 51
Cal. 3d, at 520, 797 P. 2d, at 589–590. These are sufficient
to satisfy Furman’s narrowing requirement, and alone
rendered Sanders eligible for the death penalty. More-
over, the jury’s consideration of the invalid eligibility
factors in the weighing process did not produce constitu-
tional error because all of the facts and circumstances
admissible to establish the “heinous, atrocious, or cruel”
and burglary-murder eligibility factors were also properly
adduced as aggravating facts bearing upon the “circum-
stances of the crime” sentencing factor. They were prop-
erly considered whether or not they bore upon the invali-
dated eligibility factors. See 51 Cal. 3d, at 521, 797 P. 2d,
at 590.
Sanders argues that the weighing process was skewed
by the fact that the jury was asked to consider, as one of
the sentencing factors, “the existence of any special cir-
cumstances [eligibility factors] found to be true.” Cal.
Penal Code Ann. §190.3(a) (West 1999). In Sanders’ view,
that placed special emphasis upon those facts and circum-
stances relevant to the invalid eligibility factor. Virtually
the same thing happened in Zant. There the Georgia jury
was permitted to “ ‘conside[r] all evidence in extenuation,
mitigation and aggravation of punishment,’ ” 462 U. S., at
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871–872 (quoting Zant v. Stephens, 250 Ga. 97, 99–100,
297 S. E. 2d 1, 3–4 (1982)), but also instructed specifically
that it could consider “ ‘any of [the] statutory aggravating
circumstances which you find are supported by the evi-
dence,’ ” 462 U. S., at 866. This instruction gave the facts
underlying the eligibility factors special prominence. Yet,
even though one of the three factors (that the defendant
had “substantial history of serious assaultive convictions,”
id., at 867) was later invalidated, we upheld the sentence.
We acknowledged that the erroneous instruction “might
have caused the jury to give somewhat greater weight to
respondent’s prior criminal record than it otherwise would
have given,” id., at 888; indeed, we assumed such an ef-
fect, ibid. But the effect was “merely a consequence of the
statutory label “aggravating circumstanc[e].’ ” We agreed
with the Georgia Supreme Court that any such impact
was “ ‘inconsequential,’ ” id., at 889, and held that it “can-
not fairly be regarded as a constitutional defect in the
sentencing process,” ibid. The same is true here.
* * *
Because the jury’s consideration of the invalid “special
circumstances” gave rise to no constitutional violation, the
Court of Appeals erred in ordering habeas relief. The
judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case
is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this
opinion.
It is so ordered.
 Cite as: 546 U. S. ____ (2006) 1

STEVENS, J., dissenting

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
_________________

No. 04–980
_________________

JILL L. BROWN, WARDEN, PETITIONER v. RONALD
L. SANDERS
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF
APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
[January 11, 2006]

JUSTICE STEVENS, with whom JUSTICE SOUTER joins,
dissenting.
Our prior cases have drawn a simple categorical distinc-
tion between a nonweighing State and a weighing State.
In the former, the sole function of an aggravating circum-
stance finding is to make the defendant eligible for the
death penalty. See, e.g., Zant v. Stephens, 462 U. S. 862,
874 (1983) (“[I]n Georgia, the finding of an aggravating
circumstance does not play any role in guiding the sen-
tencing body in the exercise of its discretion [to impose the
death penalty], apart from its function of narrowing the
class of persons convicted of murder who are eligible for
the death penalty”). In the latter, such a finding performs
a second function—it provides a reason for deciding to
impose that sentence on an eligible defendant. See, e.g.,
Clemons v. Mississippi, 494 U. S. 738, 745 (1990) (“In
Mississippi, unlike the Georgia scheme considered in
Zant, the finding of aggravating factors is part of the jury’s
sentencing determination, and the jury is required to
weigh any mitigating factors against the aggravating
circumstances”).
Thus, in a nonweighing State, the finding of four aggra-
vating circumstances has the same legal significance as a
finding of three, and invalidation of one is presumptively
harmless. See Stringer v. Black, 503 U. S. 222, 232 (1992)
2 BROWN v. SANDERS

STEVENS, J., dissenting

(“In a nonweighing State, so long as the sentencing body
finds at least one valid aggravating factor, the fact that it
also finds an invalid aggravating factor does not infect the
formal process of deciding whether death is an appropriate
penalty”). By contrast, when a jury is told to weigh aggra-
vating circumstances against mitigating evidence in mak-
ing its penalty decision, four aggravators presumptively
are more weighty than three. See ibid. (“[W]hen the sen-
tencing body is told to weigh an invalid factor in its deci-
sion, a reviewing court may not assume it would have
made no difference if the thumb had been removed from
death’s side of the scale”). For example, when a jury, as
here, is incorrectly informed that its finding that a killing
was “heinous, atrocious, or cruel” provides a reason for
imposing death, see generally Cal. Penal Code Ann.
§190.2(a)(14) (West Supp. 2005), that error may well affect
the jury’s deliberations. Having been told to weigh “[t]he
circumstances of the crime . . . and the existence of any
[aggravating] circumstances found to be true,” §190.3(a)
(West 1999) (emphasis added), the jury may consider its
conclusion that the killing was heinous separately from
the “circumstances of the crime” underlying that errone-
ous conclusion, improperly counting the nature of the
crime twice in determining whether a sentence of death is
warranted. Or the jury, recognizing that the legislature
has decided that a “heinous, atrocious, or cruel” murder,
without more, can be worthy of the death penalty, may
consider this a legislative imprimatur on a decision to
impose death and therefore give greater weight to its
improper heinousness finding than the circumstances of
the crime would otherwise dictate. Under either scenario
a weight has been added to death’s side of the scale, and
one cannot presume that this weight made no difference to
the jury’s ultimate conclusion.
There are, of course, different weighing systems. If a
jury is told that only those specific aggravating circum-
 Cite as: 546 U. S. ____ (2006) 3

STEVENS, J., dissenting

stances making the defendant eligible for the death pen-
alty may provide reasons for imposing that penalty, its
consideration of an invalid factor is obviously more preju-
dicial than if the jury is told that it may also consider all of
the circumstances of the crime. The fact that California
sentencing juries may consider these circumstances in-
creases the likelihood that their consideration of a subse-
quently invalidated aggravating circumstance will be
harmless, but it does not take California out of the “weigh-
ing State” category.
The majority, however, has decided to convert the
weighing/nonweighing distinction from one focused on the
role aggravating circumstances play in a jury’s sentencing
deliberations to one focused on the evidence the jury may
consider during those deliberations. Compare Stringer,
503 U. S., at 229 (explaining that Mississippi is a weighing
State because the jury must weigh aggravating circum-
stances against mitigating evidence in choosing whether
to impose the death penalty, while Georgia is a nonweigh-
ing State because “aggravating factors as such have no
specific function in [that] decision”), with ante, at 7–8 (“An
invalidated sentencing factor (whether an eligibility factor
or not) will render the sentence unconstitutional by reason
of its adding an improper element to the aggravation scale
in the weighing process unless one of the other sentencing
factors enables the sentencer to give aggravating weight to
the same facts and circumstances” (footnote omitted)).
But whether an aggravating circumstance finding plays a
role in the jury’s decision to impose the death penalty has
nothing to do with whether the jury may separately con-
sider “all the ‘circumstances of the crime.’ ”
In this case, if the question had been presented to us, I
might well have concluded that the error here was harm-
less. See generally Brecht v. Abrahamson, 507 U. S. 619,
638 (1993). But the State has merely asked us to decide
whether California is a weighing State, see Pet. for Cert. i,
4 BROWN v. SANDERS

STEVENS, J., dissenting

and the Court of Appeals correctly decided that the statu-
tory text has unambiguously answered that question. Cf.
§190.3 (enumerating aggravating and mitigating circum-
stances and requiring “the trier of fact [to] impose a sen-
tence of death if [it] concludes that the aggravating cir-
cumstances outweigh the mitigating circumstances”).
Instead of heeding this plain language, the Court has
chosen to modify our settled law, ignoring the dual role
played by aggravating circumstances in California’s death
penalty regime. Because this decision is more likely to
complicate than to clarify our capital sentencing jurispru-
dence, I respectfully dissent.
 Cite as: 546 U. S. ____ (2006) 1

BREYER, J., dissenting

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
_________________

No. 04–980
_________________

JILL L. BROWN, WARDEN, PETITIONER v. RONALD
L. SANDERS
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF
APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
[January 11, 2006]

JUSTICE BREYER, with whom JUSTICE GINSBURG joins,
dissenting.
The question before us is whether California’s approach
to imposing the death penalty makes California a “weigh-
ing” or a “nonweighing” State for purposes of determining
whether to apply “harmless-error” review in a certain kind
of death case—namely a case in which the death sentence
rests in part on an invalid aggravating circumstance. In
my view, it does not matter whether California is a
“weighing” or a “nonweighing” State, as ordinary rules of
appellate review should apply. A reviewing court must
find that the jury’s consideration of an invalid aggravator
was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt, regardless of the
form a State’s death penalty law takes.
I
To understand my answer, one must fully understand
the question, including the somewhat misleading termi-
nology in which the question is phrased.
A
Death penalty proceedings take place in two stages. At
the first stage, the jury must determine whether there is
something especially wrongful, i.e., “aggravating,” about
the defendant’s conduct. State statutes typically list these
specific “aggravating” factors, and the jury typically must
2 BROWN v. SANDERS

BREYER, J., dissenting

find at least one such factor present for the defendant to
become eligible for the death penalty. “By doing so, the
jury narrows the class of persons eligible for the death
penalty according to an objective legislative definition,” as
required by the Eighth Amendment. Lowenfield v. Phelps,
484 U. S. 231, 244 (1988). If the jury finds that an aggra-
vating factor is present and the defendant is consequently
eligible for the death penalty, it proceeds to Stage Two. At
Stage Two, the jury (or sometimes the judge) must deter-
mine whether to sentence the defendant to death or to
provide a different sentence (usually, life imprisonment).
At this stage, this Court has said, States divide as to their
approach.
Weighing States. Some States tell the jury: “Consider
all the mitigating factors and weigh them against the
specific aggravating factors that you found, at Stage One,
made the defendant eligible for the death penalty. If the
aggravating factors predominate, you must sentence the
defendant to death; otherwise, you may not.” Because the
law in these States tells the jury to weigh only statutory
aggravating factors (typically the same factors considered
at Stage One) against the mitigating factors, this Court
has called these States “weighing States.” This is some-
thing of a misnomer because the jury cannot weigh every-
thing but is instead limited to weighing certain statutorily
defined aggravating factors. The Court has identified
Mississippi as a classic example of a weighing State. See
Stringer v. Black, 503 U. S. 222, 229 (1992).
Nonweighing States. Other States tell the jury: “Con-
sider all the mitigating factors and weigh them, not simply
against the statutory aggravating factors you previously
found at Stage One, but against any and all factors you
consider aggravating.” Because the balance includes all
aggravating factors and not only those on the Stage One
eligibility list, this Court has called such States “non-
weighing States.” Although it might be clearer to call
 Cite as: 546 U. S. ____ (2006) 3

BREYER, J., dissenting

these States “complete weighing” States (for the jury can
weigh everything that is properly admissible), I shall
continue to use the traditional terminology. The Court
has identified Georgia as the prototypical example of a
State that has adopted this complete weighing approach.
Ibid.
B
The question in this case arises under the following
circumstances.
(1) At Stage One, a jury found several aggravating
factors, the presence of any one of which would make the
defendant eligible for the death penalty.
(2) At least one of those aggravating factors was an
“improper” factor, i.e., a factor that the law forbids the
jury from considering as aggravating and that the jury’s
use of which (for this purpose) was later invalidated on
appeal. The sentencing court made a mistake, indeed a
mistake of constitutional dimensions, when it listed the
“heinous, atrocious, or cruel”, Cal. Penal Code Ann.
§190.2(a)(14) (West Supp. 2005), aggravating factor as one
of the several factors for the jury to consider at Stage One.
See Godfrey v. Georgia, 446 U. S. 420, 433 (1980) (plurality
opinion). But that mistake did not, in and of itself, forbid
application of the death penalty. After all, the jury also
found other listed aggravating factors, the presence of any
one of which made the defendant eligible for the death
penalty.
(3) All the evidence before the sentencing jury at Stage
Two was properly admitted. The evidence that supported
the improper heinousness factor, for example, also showed
how the crime was committed, and the jury is clearly
entitled to consider it.
Given this outline of the problem, two questions follow.
Question One: Is it possible that the judge’s legal mistake
at Stage One—telling the jury that it could determine
4 BROWN v. SANDERS

BREYER, J., dissenting

that the “heinous, atrocious, and cruel” aggravator was
present—prejudiced the jury’s decisionmaking at Stage
Two? In other words, could that mistake create harmful
error, causing the jury to impose a death sentence due to
the fact that it was told to give special weight to its hei-
nousness finding? The lower courts have read this Court’s
opinions to say that in a nonweighing State the answer
must be “no”; but in a weighing State the answer might be
“yes.”
Question Two: Given the lower courts’ answer to Ques-
tion One, is California a nonweighing State? If so, the
reviewing court can assume, without going further, that
the error arising out of the sentencing judge’s having
listed an invalid aggravator was harmless. Or is Califor-
nia a weighing State? If so, the reviewing court should
have gone further and determined whether the error was
in fact harmless.
I would answer Question Two by holding that the lower
courts have misunderstood this Court’s answer to Ques-
tion One. Despite the Court’s occasional suggestion to the
contrary, the weighing/nonweighing distinction has little
to do with the need to determine whether the error was
harmless. Moreover, given “the ‘acute need’ for reliable
decisionmaking when the death penalty is at issue,” Deck
v. Missouri, 544 U. S. ___, ___ (2005) (slip op., at 10),
reviewing courts should decide if that error was harmful,
regardless of the form a State’s death penalty law takes.
II
To distinguish between weighing and nonweighing
States for purposes of determining whether to apply harm-
less-error analysis is unrealistic, impractical, and legally
unnecessary.
A
Use of the distinction is unrealistic because it is unre-
 Cite as: 546 U. S. ____ (2006) 5

BREYER, J., dissenting

lated to any plausible conception of how a capital sentenc-
ing jury actually reaches its decision. First, consider the
kind of error here at issue. It is not an error about the
improper admission of evidence. See infra, at 12–14. It is
an error about the importance a jury might attach to
certain admissible evidence. Using the metaphor of a
“thumb on death’s side of the scale,” we have identified the
error as the “possibility not only of randomness but also of
bias in favor of the death penalty.” Stringer v. Black, 503
U. S., at 236; see Sochor v. Florida, 504 U. S. 527, 532
(1992) (“Employing an invalid aggravating factor in the
weighing process creates the possibility of randomness by
placing a thumb on death’s side of the scale, thus creating
the risk of treating the defendant as more deserving of the
death penalty” (citations and alterations omitted)).
Second, consider why that error could affect a decision to
impose death. If the error causes harm, it is because a jury
has given special weight to its finding of (or the evidence
that shows) the invalid “aggravating factor.” The jury
might do so because the judge or prosecutor led it to be-
lieve that state law attaches particular importance to that
factor: Indeed, why else would the State call that factor an
“aggravator” and/or permit it to render a defendant death
eligible? See Zant v. Stephens, 462 U. S. 862, 888 (1983)
(recognizing that statutory label “arguably might have
caused the jury to give somewhat greater weight to respon-
dent’s prior criminal record than it otherwise would have
given”); see also ante, at 2 (STEVENS, J., dissenting) (noting
that jury may consider the aggravating label “a legislative
imprimatur on a decision to impose death and therefore
give greater weight to its improper heinousness find-
ing . . .”); Clemons v. Mississippi, 494 U. S. 738, 753, 755
(1990) (noting that the prosecutor “repeatedly emphasized
and argued the ‘especially heinous’ factor during the sen-
tencing hearing” and remanding for the Mississippi Su-
preme Court to conduct harmless-error review).
6 BROWN v. SANDERS

BREYER, J., dissenting

The risk that the jury will give greater weight at Stage
Two to its Stage One finding of an aggravating factor—a
factor that, it turns out, never should have been found in
the first instance—is significant in a weighing State, for
the judge will explicitly tell the jury to consider that par-
ticular aggravating factor in its decisionmaking process.
That risk may prove significant in a nonweighing State as
well, for there too the judge may tell the jury to consider
that aggravating factor in its decisionmaking process.
The only difference between the two kinds of States is
that, in the nonweighing State, the jury can also consider
other aggravating factors (which are usually not enumer-
ated by statute). Cf. Ga. Code Ann. §17–10–30(b) (2004)
(judge or jury “shall consider . . . any mitigating circum-
stances or aggravating circumstances otherwise author-
ized by law and any of the following statutory aggravating
circumstances which may be supported by the evidence”
(emphasis added)). But the potential for the same kind of
constitutional harm exists in both kinds of States, namely
that the jury will attach special weight to that aggravator
on the scale, the aggravator that the law says should not
have been there.
To illustrate this point, consider the following two state-
ments. Statement One—The judge tells the jury in a
weighing State: “You can sentence the defendant to death
only if you find one, or more, of the following three aggra-
vating circumstances, X, Y, or Z. If you do, the law re-
quires you to consider those aggravators and weigh them
against the mitigators.” Statement Two—The judge tells
the jury in a nonweighing State: “You can sentence the
defendant to death only if you find one, or more, of the
following three aggravating circumstances, X, Y, or Z. If
you do, the law permits you to consider all mitigating and
aggravating evidence, including X, Y, and Z, in reaching
your decision.”
What meaningful difference is there between these two
 Cite as: 546 U. S. ____ (2006) 7

BREYER, J., dissenting

statements? The decisionmaking process of the first jury
and that of the second jury will not differ significantly:
Both juries will weigh the evidence offered in aggravation
and the evidence offered in mitigation. Cf. Brief for
Criminal Justice Legal Foundation as Amicus Curiae 4
(“In reality, all sentencers ‘weigh’ ”). If Statement One
amounts to harmful error because the prosecutor empha-
sized the importance of wrongfully listed factor Y, why
would Statement Two not amount to similarly harmful
error? In both instances, a jury might put special weight
upon its previous finding of factor Y. It is not surprising
that commentators have found unsatisfactory the Court’s
efforts to distinguish between the two statements for
harmless-error purposes. See, e.g., Steiker & Steiker,
Sober Second Thoughts: Reflections on Two Decades of
Constitutional Regulation of Capital Punishment, 109
Harv. L. Rev. 355, 386–387 (1995) (“[T]he different doc-
trinal approaches to ‘weighing’ and ‘non-weighing’
schemes are difficult to justify given that the sentencer’s
decisionmaking process is likely to be similar under either
scheme”); Widder, Hanging Life in the Balance: The Su-
preme Court and the Metaphor of Weighing in the Penalty
Phase of the Capital Trial, 68 Tulane L. Rev. 1341, 1363–
1364, 1365 (1994) (arguing that the distinction is largely
an “illusion” that “appears to be derived from a fixation on
the literal meaning of the metaphor of weighing, [which]
remains a common means of describing the capital sen-
tencing process even in decisions of state courts that rely
on the non-weighing status of their statutory schemes to
uphold death sentences resting on invalid factors”).
B
The distinction is impractical to administer for it creates
only two paradigms—States that weigh only statutory
aggravators and States that weigh any and all circum-
stances (i.e., statutory and nonstatutory aggravators).
8 BROWN v. SANDERS

BREYER, J., dissenting

Many States, however, fall somewhere in between the two
paradigms. A State, for example, might have a set of
aggravating factors making a defendant eligible for the
death penalty and an additional set of sentencing factors
(unrelated to the eligibility determination) designed to
channel the jury’s discretion. California is such a State, as
it requires the jury to take into account the eligibility-
related aggravating factors and 11 other sentencing fac-
tors—including an omnibus factor that permits considera-
tion of all of the circumstances of the crime. Cal. Penal
Code Ann. §190.3 (West 1999). And because many States
collapse Stage One (eligibility) and Stage Two (sentence
selection) into a single proceeding in which the jury hears
all of the evidence at the same time, those States permit
the prosecution to introduce and argue any relevant evi-
dence, including evidence related to the statutory aggrava-
tors. Indeed, one State the Court has characterized as a
weighing State (Mississippi) and one State the Court has
characterized as a nonweighing State (Virginia) both fall
into this intermediate category. Miss. Code Ann. §99–19–
101 (2000); Va. Code Ann. §19.2–264.4(B) (Lexis 2004).
Efforts to classify these varied schemes, for purposes of
applying harmless-error analysis, produce much legal heat
while casting little light.
C
Our precedents, read in detail, do not require us to
maintain this unrealistic and impractical distinction. The
Court has discussed the matter in three key cases. In the
first case, Zant v. Stephens, the Court considered an error
that arose in Georgia, a nonweighing State. The Georgia
Supreme Court had held that one of several statutory
aggravating circumstances found by the jury—that the
defendant had a “ ‘substantial history of serious assaultive
criminal convictions’ ”—was unconstitutionally vague. 462
U. S., at 867, and n. 5. The jury, however, had also found
 Cite as: 546 U. S. ____ (2006) 9

BREYER, J., dissenting

other aggravators present, so the defendant remained
eligible for death. The Georgia Supreme Court concluded
that the sentencing court’s instruction on the unconstitu-
tional factor, though erroneous, “had ‘an inconsequential
impact on the jury’s decision regarding the death pen-
alty.’ ” Id., at 889 (quoting Zant v. Stephens, 250 Ga. 97,
100, 297 S. E. 2d 1, 4 (1982)).
This Court agreed with the Georgia Supreme Court’s
conclusion. The Court conceded that the label—“aggravating
circumstance”—created the risk that the jury might place
too much weight on the evidence that showed that aggra-
vator. Indeed, it said that the statutory label “ ‘aggravat-
ing circumstances’ ” might “arguably . . . have caused the
jury to give somewhat greater weight to respondent’s prior
criminal record than it otherwise would have given.” 462
U. S., at 888. But the Court concluded that, under the
circumstances, the error was harmless. For one thing,
Georgia’s statute permitted the jury to consider more than
just the specific aggravators related to Stage One. See id.,
at 886. For another thing, the trial court’s “instructions
did not place particular emphasis on the role of statutory
aggravating circumstances in the jury’s ultimate decision.”
Id., at 889 (citation omitted). In fact, it specifically told
the jury to “ ‘consider all facts and circumstances pre-
sented in ext[e]nuation . . ., mitigation and aggravation.’ ”
Ibid. Finally, there was no indication at all that either the
judge or the prosecutor tried to single out the erroneous
aggravator for special weight. Because under the circum-
stances there was no real harm, the Court concluded that
“any possible impact cannot fairly be regarded as a consti-
tutional defect in the sentencing process.” Ibid.
The Court in Zant did not say that the jury’s considera-
tion of an improper aggravator is never harmless in a
State like Georgia. It did say that the jury’s consideration
of the improper aggravator was harmless under the cir-
cumstances of that case. And the Court’s detailed discus-
10 BROWN v. SANDERS

BREYER, J., dissenting

sion of the jury instructions is inconsistent with a rule of
law that would require an automatic conclusion of “harm-
less error” in States with death penalty laws like Geor-
gia’s. See id., at 888–889, and n. 25; see also id., at 891
(“Under Georgia’s sentencing scheme, and under the trial
judge’s instructions in this case, no suggestion is made
that the presence of more than one aggravating circum-
stance should be given special weight” (emphasis added)).
The dissent in Zant also clearly understood the principal
opinion to have conducted a harmless-error analysis. Id.,
at 904–905 (opinion of Marshall, J., joined by Brennan, J.).
And the Court repeated this same understanding in a case
decided only two weeks later. Barclay v. Florida, 463 U. S.
939, 951, n. 8 (1983) (plurality opinion) (upholding death
sentence and concluding that “we need not apply the type of
federal harmless-error analysis that was necessary in
Zant”).
The second case, Clemons v. Mississippi, involved a
weighing State, Mississippi. The Mississippi Supreme
Court upheld the petitioner’s death sentence “even though
the jury instruction regarding one of the aggravating
factors pressed by the State, that the murder was ‘espe-
cially heinous, atrocious, or cruel,’ was constitutionally
invalid.” 494 U. S., at 741. Finding it unclear whether the
state court reweighed the aggravating and mitigating
evidence or conducted harmless-error review, the Court
vacated and remanded to the Mississippi Supreme Court
to conduct either procedure (or to remand to a sentencing
jury) in the first instance. Id., at 754.
As far as the Court’s “harmless-error” analysis reveals,
the reason the Court remanded—the reason it thought the
error might not be harmless—had nothing to do with the
fact that Mississippi was a so-called weighing State. Cf.
ante, at 5, n. 3. Rather, the Court thought the error might
be harmful because “the State repeatedly emphasized and
argued the ‘especially heinous’ factor during the sentenc-
 Cite as: 546 U. S. ____ (2006) 11

BREYER, J., dissenting

ing hearing,” in stark contrast to the “little emphasis” it
gave to the other valid aggravator found by the jury. 494
U. S., at 753. The Court concluded that, “[u]nder these
circumstances, it would require a detailed explanation
based on the record for us possibly to agree that the error
in giving the invalid ‘especially heinous’ instruction was
harmless.” Id., at 753–754.
The third case, Stringer v. Black, presented a different
kind of question: For the purposes of Teague v. Lane, 489
U. S. 288 (1989), does the rule that a vague aggravating
circumstance violates the Eighth Amendment apply to a
weighing State like Mississippi in the same way it applies
to a nonweighing State like Georgia? The Court answered
this question “yes.” In so doing, it described the difference
between Mississippi’s system and Georgia’s system as
follows:
“In a nonweighing State so long as the sentencing body
finds at least one valid aggravating factor, the fact
that it also finds an invalid aggravating factor does
not infect the formal process of deciding whether death
is an appropriate penalty. Assuming a determination
by the state appellate court that the invalid factor
would not have made a difference to the jury’s deter-
mination, there is no constitutional violation resulting
from the introduction of the invalid factor in an earlier
stage of the proceedings. But when the sentencing
body is told to weigh an invalid factor in its decision, a
reviewing court may not assume it would have made
no difference if the thumb had been removed from
death’s side of the scale. When the weighing process
itself has been skewed, only constitutional harmless-
error analysis or reweighing at the trial or appellate
level suffices to guarantee that the defendant received
an individualized sentence.” 503 U. S., at 232 (em-
phasis added).
12 BROWN v. SANDERS

BREYER, J., dissenting

The first sentence in this statement is the first and only
suggestion in our cases that the submission of a vague
aggravating circumstance to a jury can never result in
constitutional error in a nonweighing State. Indeed, the
term “nonweighing State,” and the significance attached to
it, does not appear in the Court’s jurisprudence prior to
Stringer. The second sentence in the statement is less
categorical than the first. It suggests that a state appel-
late court would have to make some form of a harmless-
error inquiry to satisfy itself that the invalidated factor
“would not have made a difference to the jury’s determina-
tion” before it could conclude that there was “no constitu-
tional violation.” Ibid. Given this errant language in
Stringer, I agree that it is “[n]ot surprisin[g]” that the
lower courts have since operated under the assumption
“that different rules apply to weighing and non-weighing
States,” and that harmless-error review is necessary only
in the former. Ante, at 5, n. 3. My point is simply that
such an assumption is unfounded based on our prior cases.
And regardless of the lower courts’ interpretation of our
precedents, I think it more important that our own deci-
sions have not repeated Stringer’s characterization of
those precedents. See, e.g., Tuggle v. Netherland, 516 U. S.
10, 11 (1995) (per curiam) (characterizing Zant as holding
“that a death sentence supported by multiple aggravating
circumstances need not always be set aside if one aggravator
is found to be invalid” (emphasis added)).
For the reasons stated in Parts II–A and II–B, supra, I
would not take a single ambiguous sentence of dicta and
derive from it a rule of law that is unjustified and that, in
cases where the error is in fact harmful, would deprive a
defendant of a fair and reliable sentencing proceeding.
III
The upshot is that I would require a reviewing court to
examine whether the jury’s consideration of an unconsti-
 Cite as: 546 U. S. ____ (2006) 13

BREYER, J., dissenting

tutional aggravating factor was harmful, regardless of
whether the State is a weighing State or a nonweighing
State. I would hold that the fact that a State is a non-
weighing State may make the possibility of harmful error
less likely, but it does not excuse a reviewing court from
ensuring that the error was in fact harmless. Our cases in
this area do not require a different result.
IV
The Court reaches a somewhat similar conclusion. It,
too, would abolish (or at least diminish the importance of)
the weighing/nonweighing distinction for purposes of
harmless-error analysis. But then, surprisingly, it also
diminishes the need to conduct any harmless-error review
at all. If all the evidence was properly admitted and if the
jury can use that evidence when it considers other aggra-
vating factors, any error, the Court announces, must be
harmless. See ante, at 7 (holding that when “one of the
other sentencing factors enables the sentencer to give
aggravating weight to the same facts and circumstances”
that underlie the invalidated aggravating factor, a review-
ing court need not apply harmless-error review).
Common sense suggests, however, and this Court has
explicitly held, that the problem before us is not a problem
of the admissibility of certain evidence. It is a problem of
the emphasis given to that evidence by the State or the
trial court. If that improper emphasis is strong enough, it
can wrongly place a “thumb on death’s side of the scale” at
Stage Two (sentencing). That is what the Court said in
Stringer, that is what the Court necessarily implied in
Zant, and that is what the Court held in Clemons. I be-
lieve the Court is right to depart from the implication of
an errant sentence in Stringer. But it is wrong to depart
without explanation from Clemons’ unanimous holding—a
holding that at least two Members of this Court have
explicitly recognized as such. See Pensinger v. California,
14 BROWN v. SANDERS

BREYER, J., dissenting

502 U. S. 930, 931 (1991) (O’CONNOR, J., joined by
KENNEDY, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari) (noting
that the “ ‘especially heinous’ instruction did not change the
mix of evidence presented to the jury in [Clemons]” and
“that fact alone did not support a finding of harmlessness”).
The Court cannot reconcile its holding with Clemons.
That opinion makes clear that the issue is one of empha-
sis, not of evidence. Indeed, the Court explicitly dis-
avowed the suggestion that Mississippi’s “reliance on the
‘especially heinous’ factor led to the introduction of any
evidence that was not otherwise admissible in either the
guilt or sentencing phases of the proceeding. All of the
circumstances surrounding the murder already had been
aired during the guilt phase of the trial and a jury clearly
is entitled to consider such evidence in imposing [the]
sentence.” 494 U. S., at 754–755, n. 5. And the entire
Court agreed that the potentially improper emphasis
consisted of the fact that “the State repeatedly emphasized
and argued the ‘especially heinous’ factor during the sen-
tencing hearing,” while placing “little emphasis” on the
sole valid aggravator of robbery for pecuniary gain. Id., at
753–754; see also id., at 773, n. 23 (Blackmun, J., joined
by Marshall and STEVENS, JJ., concurring in part and
dissenting in part).
The Court’s only answer is to assert that “Clemons
maintains the distinction envisioned in Zant.” Ante, at 6,
n. 3 (citing Clemons, supra, at 745). But Clemons did no
such thing. Although the Court did observe the differ-
ences between the statutory schemes of Georgia and Mis-
sissippi, it certainly did not, as the Court claims, suggest
that harmless-error analysis should never be conducted in
the former and always be conducted in the latter. Rather,
the Court made the unremarkable statement that “[i]n a
State like Georgia, where aggravating circumstances serve
only to make a defendant eligible for the death penalty
and not to determine the punishment, the invalidation of
 Cite as: 546 U. S. ____ (2006) 15

BREYER, J., dissenting

one aggravating circumstance does not necessarily require
an appellate court to vacate a death sentence and remand
to a jury.” Clemons, supra, at 744–745 (emphasis added).
Of course, the implication of the qualifier “necessarily” is
that, in some cases, a jury’s consideration of an invali-
dated aggravating circumstance might require that a
death sentence be vacated, even “[i]n a State like Georgia.”
In sum, an inquiry based solely on the admissibility of
the underlying evidence is inconsistent with our previous
cases. And as explained above, see supra, at 5–7, the
potential for a tilting of the scales toward death is present
even in those States (like Georgia and Virginia) that per-
mit a jury to consider all of the circumstances of the crime.
V
It may well be that the errors at issue in this case were
harmless. The State of California did not ask us to con-
sider the Ninth Circuit’s contrary view, and I have not
done so. Given the fact that I (like the Court in this re-
spect) would abolish the weighing/nonweighing distinc-
tion, and in light of the explanation of the kind of error at
issue, I would remand this case and require the Ninth
Circuit to reconsider its entire decision in light of the
considerations I have described.