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BROWN v. SANDERS Breyer, J., dissenting
to give somewhat greater weight to respondent’s prior crim inal record than it otherwise would have given.” 462 U. S., at 888. But the Court concluded that, under the circum stances, 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 presented in ex t[e]nuation . . . , mitigation and aggravation.’ ” Ibid. Fi nally, 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 circumstances there was no real harm, the Court concluded that “any possible impact cannot fairly be regarded as a constitutional defect in the sentencing process.” Ibid. The Court in Zant did not say that the jury’s consideration of an improper aggravator is never harmless in a State like Georgia. It did say that the jury’s consideration of the im proper aggravator was harmless under the circumstances of that case. And the Court’s detailed discussion of the jury instructions is inconsistent with a rule of law that would re quire an automatic conclusion of “harmless error” in States with death penalty laws like Georgia’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 circumstance 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 de cided only two weeks later. Barclay v. Florida, 463 U. S. 939, 951, n. 8 (1983) (plurality opinion) (upholding death sen
