Lead Opinion
delivered the opinion of the Court.
We granted certiorari in this case to consider whether a prisoner whose conviction became final before our decision in Espinosa v. Florida,
I
On February 5, 1983, Cary Michael Lambrix and his girlfriend, Frances Smith, met Clarence Moore and Aleisha Bryant at a local tavern. The two couples returned to Lam-brix’s trailer for dinner, where Lambrix killed Moore and Bryant in brutal fashion. Lambrix was convicted on two counts of first-degree murder. In the sentencing phase of trial, the jury rendered an advisory verdict recommending
After the Florida courts denied his repeated efforts to obtain collateral relief, Lambrix v. Dugger,
The Florida Supreme Court rejected Lambrix’s Espinosa claim without considering its merits on the ground that the claim was procedurally barred. Lambrix v. Singletary, 641
After the Florida Supreme Court entered judgment against Lambrix, the Eleventh Circuit adjudicated his ha-beas petition. Without even acknowledging the procedural bar — which was expressly raised and argued by the State— the Court of Appeals proceeded to address the Espinosa claim, and determined that Espinosa announced a new rule which cannot be applied retroactively on federal habeas under Teague v. Lane, supra.
II
Before turning to the question presented m this case, we pause to consider the State’s contention that Lambrix’s Es-pinosa claim is procedurally barred because he failed to contend that the jury was instructed with a vague HAC aggra-vator on his direct appeal to the Florida Supreme Court. According to the State, the Florida Supreme Court “has consistently required that an Espinosa issue must have been objected to at trial and pursued on direct appeal in order to be reviewed in postconviction proceedings.” Brief for Respondent 30, citing Chandler v. Dugger,
In Coleman v. Thompson,
Application of the “independent and adequate state ground” doctrine to federal habeas review is based upon equitable considerations of federalism and comity. It “ensures that the States’ interest in correcting their own mistakes is respected in all federal habeas cases.” Coleman,
We are somewhat puzzled that the Eleventh Circuit, after having held proceedings in abeyance while petitioner brought his claim in state court, did not so much as mention the Florida Supreme Court’s determination that Lambrix’s Espinosa claim was procedurally barred. The State of Florida raised that point before both the District Court and the Court of Appeals, going so far as to reiterate it in a postjudg
Despite our puzzlement at the Court of Appeals’ failure to resolve this case on the basis of procedural bar, we hesitate to resolve it on that basis ourselves. Lambrix asserts several reasons why his claim is not procedurally barred, which seem to us insubstantial but may not be so; as we have repeatedly recognized, the courts of appeals and district courts are more familiar than we with the procedural practices of the States in which they regularly sit, see, e. g., Rummel v. Estelle,
III
Florida employs a three-stage sentencing procedure. First, the jury weighs statutorily specified aggravating circumstances against any mitigating circumstances, and renders an “advisory sentence” of either life imprisonment or death. Fla. Stat. §921.141(2) (Supp. 1992). Second, the trial court weighs the aggravating and mitigating circumstances, and enters a sentence of life imprisonment or death;
Lambrix’s jury, which was instructed on five aggravating circumstances, recommended that he be sentenced to death for each murder. The trial court found five aggravating circumstances as to Moore’s murder and four as to Bryant’s, including that each murder was “especially heinous and atrocious”; it found no mitigating circumstances as to either murder; it concluded that the aggravating circumstances outweighed the mitigating, and sentenced Lambrix to death on each count. App. 20-21. Although Lambrix failed to raise any claims concerning the sentencing procedure on direct appeal, the Florida Supreme Court agreed with the trial court’s findings as to the aggravating circumstances. Lambrix v. State,
Lambrix contends that the jury’s consideration of the HAC aggravator violated the Eighth Amendment because the jury instructions concerning this circumstance failed to provide sufficient guidance to limit the jury’s discretion. Like the Eleventh Circuit, see
In Teague we held that, in general, “new constitutional rules of criminal procedure will not be applicable to those cases which have become final before the new rules are announced.”
IV
Lambrix’s conviction became final on November 24, 1986, when his time for filing a petition for certiorari expired. Thus, our first and principal task is to survey the legal landscape as of that date, to determine whether the rule later announced in Espinosa was dictated by then-existing precedent — whether, that is, the unlawfulness of Lambrix’s
In Espinosa, we determined that the Florida capital jury is, in an important respect, a cosentencer with the judge. As we explained: “Florida has essentially split the weighing process in two. Initially, the jury weighs aggravating and mitigating circumstances, and the result of that weighing process is then in turn weighed within the trial court’s process of weighing aggravating and mitigating circumstances.”
In our view, Espinosa was not dictated by precedent, but announced a new rule which cannot be used as the basis for federal habeas corpus relief. It is significant that Espinosa itself did not purport to rely upon any controlling precedent.
Baldwin itself contains further evidence that Espinosa set forth a new rule. Baldwin considered the constitutionality of Alabama’s death sentencing scheme, in which the jury’was required to “fix the punishment at death” if it found the defendant guilty of an aggravated offense, whereupon the trial court would conduct a sentencing hearing at which it would determine a sentence of death or of life imprisonment.
The Supreme Court decisions relied upon most heavily by petitioner are Godfrey v. Georgia,
Although Godfrey and Maynard support the proposition that vague aggravators must be sufficiently narrowed to avoid arbitrary imposition of the death penalty, these cases, and others, demonstrate that the failure to instruct the sentencing jury properly with respect to the aggravator does not automatically render a defendant’s sentence unconstitutional. We have repeatedly indicated that a sentencing
We reached a similar conclusion in Clemons v. Mississippi, applied retroactively to February 1985 in Stringer. Clemons considered the question whether the sentencer’s weighing of a vague HAC aggravator rendered that sentence unconstitutional in a “weighing” State. The sentencing jury in Clemons, as in Maynard, was given a HAC instruction that was unconstitutionally vague. We held that “the Federal Constitution does not prevent a state appellate court from upholding a death sentence that is based in part on an invalid or improperly defined aggravating circumstance either by reweighing of the aggravating and mitigating evidence or by harmless-error review.” Clemons, supra, at 741, 745; see also Stringer, supra, at 230.
The principles of the above-described cases do not dictate the result we ultimately reached in Espinosa. Florida, unlike Oklahoma, see Maynard, supra, at 360, had given its facially vague HAC aggravator a limiting construction sufficient to satisfy the Constitution. See Proffitt v. Florida,
(1) The mere cabining of the trial court’s discretion would avoid arbitrary imposition of the death penalty, and thus avoid unconstitutionality. In Proffitt v. Florida, supra, we upheld the Florida death penalty scheme against the contention that it resulted in arbitrary imposition of the death penalty, see Gregg v. Georgia,
(2) There was no error for the trial judge to cure, since under Florida law the trial court, not the jury, ivas the sen-tencer. In Espinosa we concluded, in effect, that the jury was at least in part a cosentencer along with the trial court. That determination can fairly be traced to our opinion in Sochor v. Florida,
(3) The trial court’s weighing of properly narrowed ag-gravators and mitigators was sufficiently independent of the jury to cure any error in the jury’s consideration of a vague aggravator. Although the Florida Supreme Court had interpreted its statute — which provided that the judge was the sentencer, Fla. Stat. § 921.141(3) (Supp. 1992), and that the
That Espinosa announced a new rule is strongly confirmed by our decision in Walton v. Arizona,
“[E]ven if a trial judge fails to apply the narrowing construction or applies an improper construction, the Constitution does not necessarily require that a state appellate court vacate a death sentence based on that factor. Rather, as we held in Clemons v. Mississippi,494 U. S. 738 (1990), a state appellate court may itself determine whether the evidence supports the existence of the aggravating circumstance as properly defined or the court may eliminate consideration of the factor altogether and determine whether any remaining aggravating circumstances are sufficient to warrant the death penalty.” Walton, supra, at 653-654 (emphasis added).
Our use of the disjunctive suggests that as late as 1990, if a Florida trial court determined that the defendant’s conduct fell within the narrowed HAC aggravator, the sentence would satisfy the Eighth Amendment irrespective of whether the trial court reweighed the aggravating and mitigating factors.
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 Lam-brix’s conviction became final, every court decision we are aware of did so. See, e. g., Smalley v. State,
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,
V
Since we have determined that Espinosa announced a new rule under Teague, there remains only the task of determining whether that new rule nonetheless falls within one of the two exceptions to our nonretroactivity doctrine. “The first exception permits the retroactive application of a new rule if the rule places a class of private conduct beyond the power of the State to proscribe, see Teague,
The second exception is for “ ‘watershed rules of criminal procedure’ implicating the fundamental fairness and accuracy of the criminal proceeding.” Ibid. (quoting Teague,
* * *
For the reasons stated, the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit is
Affirmed.
Notes
Lambrix also contends that the trial court itself failed to apply a properly narrowed HAC aggravator. We decline to consider this contention because it is not fairly within the question presented, which asked only whether Teague v. Lane,
Our description of the holding of Espinosa in the preceding paragraph of text is so clear that we are at a loss to explain Justice Stevens’s impression that we accord Espinosa the “novel interpretation” that “the constitutional error in the jury instruction will 'automatically render a defendant’s sentence unconstitutional’ ” Post, at 541 (dissenting opinion) (quoting infra, at 530). The sentence from which the phrase quoted by Justice Stevens is wrenched (so violently that the word “not” which precedes it is omitted) is not discussing the holding of Espinosa; indeed, it does not even mention Espinosa; nor does the entire paragraph or the previous or subsequent paragraphs.
Justice Stevens maintains that this statement is proved wrong by Espinosa’s citation of Godfrey v. Georgia, 446 U. S. 420 (1980), and Tedder v. State,
Justice Stevens’s dissent says that “[gjiven that the judge’s instruction to the jury failed to narrow the HAC aggravator, there is no reason to believe that [the trial judge] appropriately narrowed the [HAC] factor in his . . . deliberations.” Post, at 545. Our cases establish that there is always a “reason to believe” that, which we consider fully adequate: “Trial judges are presumed to know the law and to apply it in making their decisions. If the [State] Supreme Court has narrowed the definition of the [HAC] aggravating circumstance, we presume that [state] trial judges are applying the narrower definition.” Walton v. Arizona,
Justice Stevens accuses us of “simply ignoring the reasoning in Tedder." Post, at 543 (dissenting opinion). We have of course not done so. See supra, at 526, 533-534 and this page. Justice Stevens, however, fails to discuss, or indeed even mention, the cases interpreting Tedder that contradict the dissent’s view — cases in both this Court and the Florida Supreme Court repeatedly emphasizing the trial judge’s obligation to make an independent assessment and weighing of the aggravating and mitigating circumstances. He relies, for example, upon the Florida Supreme Court’s decision in Riley v. Wainwright,
Justice Stevens is thus simply wrong in stating that we have confused appellate application of a limiting construction with a trial court’s deference to a tainted jury recommendation, see post, at 545 (dissenting
Dissenting Opinion
dissenting.
Two propositions of law supported our holding in Espinosa v. Florida,
Today the Court reaches the conclusion that Espinosa announced a new rule by placing a novel interpretation on its holding. The majority apparently construes Espinosa as holding that the constitutional error in the jury instruction will “automatically render a defendant’s sentence unconstitutional.” Ante, at 530.
In a sinuous, difficult to follow argument, the Court suggests that three hypothetical propositions of law somehow demonstrate that the narrow holding in Espinosa was not dictated by Godfrey and Tedder. First, the Court posits that a reasonable jurist might have believed that “[t]he mere cabining of the trial court’s discretion” was alone enough to avoid constitutional error. Ante, at 532 (emphasis deleted).
Second, simply ignoring the reasoning in Tedder, the Court suggests that there was “no error for the trial judge to cure, since under Florida law the trial court, not the jury, was the sentencer.” Ante, at 533 (emphasis deleted). It is, of course, true that the judge imposes the sentence after receiving the jury’s recommendation. But this has never
Third, the Court suggests that the trial court’s “weighing of properly narrowed aggravators and mitigators was sufficiently independent of the jury to cure any error in the jury’s consideration of a vague aggravator.” Ante, at 534 (em
Here, again, the Court finds that our statements in cases like Walton v. Arizona,
As a matter of logic and law there was nothing new about Espinosa’s holding that the jury plays a central role in Florida’s capital sentencing scheme. Moreover, as statistics that
I respectfully dissent.
Godfrey, of course, held that Georgia’s “outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible and inhuman” aggravating factor failed to adequately channel the jury’s discretion. See
These two “controlling precedents,” both of which were cited in the Espinosa opinion, provided sufficient support for its holding. Thus the Court is simply mistaken when it asserts that “Espinosa itself did not purport to rely upon any controlling precedent.” Ante, at 528.
Tedder, of course, was not an isolated decision. In Riley v. Wainwright,
Responding to this dissent in n. 2, ante, at 528, the Court states that the clause I have quoted was not intended to describe the Court’s understanding of the holding in Espinosa. If that be so, the relevance of this portion of the Court’s opinion, including its reliance on Godfrey and Maynard, is opaque, at best.
The Court also relies heavily on a passage in our opinion in Walton v. Arizona,
The Florida Supreme Court has applied Tedder in numerous cases to reverse a trial judge’s override of a jury’s life sentence. See, e. g., Wasko v. State,
Nothing in the record indicates that the judge recognized that the jury instruction was erroneous, or that he sought to cure that error in his own weighing process. In finding that the HAC aggravator was present, the judge merely stated: “The facts speak for themselves.” App. 20.
“As a matter of feet, the jury sentence is the sentence that is usually imposed by the Florida Supreme Court. The State has attached an appendix to its brief, see App. to Brief for Respondent A1-A70, setting forth data concerning 469 capital eases that were reviewed by the Florida Supreme Court between 1980 and 1991. In 341 of those eases (73%), the jury recommended the death penalty; in none of those cases did the trial judge impose a lesser sentence. In 91 cases (19%), the jury recommended a life sentence; in all but one of those cases, the trial judge overrode the jury’s recommended life sentence and imposed a death sentence. In 69 of those overrides (77%), however, the Florida Supreme Court vacated the trial judge’s sentence and either imposed a life sentence itself or remanded for a new sentencing hearing.
“Two conclusions are evident. First, when the jury recommends a death sentence, the trial judge will almost certainly impose that sentence. Second, when the jury recommends a life sentence, although overrides have been sustained occasionally, the Florida Supreme Court will normally uphold the jury rather than the judge. It is therefore clear that in practice, erroneous instructions to the jury at the sentencing phase of the trial may make the difference between life or death.” Sochor v. Florida,
Dissenting Opinion
dissenting.
Although I agree with much of the reasoning set forth in Part II of the Court’s opinion, I disagree with its disposition of the case. I would instead vacate the judgment of the Court of Appeals and remand the case so that the Court of Appeals might consider the procedural bar issue in the first instance.
The Court holds that, as a general practice, a federal ha-beas court should consider whether the relief a habeas petitioner requests is a “new rule” under Teague v. Lane,
With this much of the Court’s opinion I agree. Of course, there may be exceptions to the rule that the procedural bar issue should be resolved first. One case might be where the procedural bar question is excessively complicated, but the Teague issue can be easily resolved. The Court of Appeals here gave no reason for its failure to consider the Florida Supreme Court’s determination that petitioner’s claim based on Espinosa v. Florida,
Accordingly, I would remand the case to the Court of Appeals for it to resolve the procedural bar issue. As the Court points out, the Court of Appeals is better suited to evaluating matters of state procedure than are we. Ante, at 525. In my view, then, it is premature to address the State’s contention that petitioner’s Espinosa claim is barred on Teague grounds. Nevertheless, since the Court reaches the question, I wish to express my agreement with Justice Stevens’ resolution of the Teague issue.