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OCTOBER TERM, 2005 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 special circum stances on direct appeal, but nonetheless affirmed the conviction and sentence. The Federal District Court subsequently denied Sanders ha beas relief, rejecting his claim that the jury’s consideration of invalid special circumstances rendered his death sentence 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 sentencer must de termine 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 answering the question con fronted here—what happens when the sentencer imposes the death pen alty after finding a valid eligibility factor, but under a scheme in which another eligibility factor is later held invalid—this Court has set forth different rules for so-called weighing and non-weighing States. In a weighing State, the sentencer could consider as aggravation only speci fied eligibility factors. Where the sentencer relied on an eligibility fac tor 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 necessarily occur in a non-weighing State, however, which
