on writ of certiorari to the supreme court of
florida
[June 8, 1992]
Justice Scalia , concurring in part and dissenting in
Even without that finding, three unquestionably valid
aggravating factors remained, so that the death sentence
complied with the so called "narrowing" requirement
imposed by the line of cases commencing with Furman v.
Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972). The constitutional "error"
whose harmlessness is at issue, then, concerns only the
inclusion of the "coldness" factor in the weighing of the
aggravating factors against the mitigating evidence petitioner offered. It has been my view that the Eighth
Amendment does not require any consideration of mitigating evidence, see Walton v. Arizona, 497 U.S. 639, ----
(1990) (opinion concurring in part and concurring in
judgment)--a view I am increasingly confirmed in, as the
byzantine complexity of the death penalty jurisprudence we
are annually accreting becomes more and more apparent.
Since the weighing here was in my view not constitutionally
required, any error in the doing of it raised no federal
question. For that reason, I would affirm the death
sentence.
