The U.S. Supreme Court re-instated the death sentence of Ronald Sanders in a 5-4 ruling overturning a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. After Sanders had been sentenced to death in California, the state’s supreme court held that two of the aggravating factors used by the jury in its sentencing determination were invalid. The 9th Circuit had held that California is a “weighing state” and hence the use of these invalid aggravating factors rendered the death sentence unconstitutional because the lower court had not found that such use was harmless to the defendant.

The majority in the U.S. Supreme Court dispensed with the distinction between weighing and non-weighing states and annouced a new way of evaluating the effect of invalid aggravating factors: “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.” The Court found that in this case there were other aggravating factors fitting this description and therefore Sanders’ death sentence was valid.
(Brown v. Sanders, No. 04-980, decided Jan. 11, 2006; see also Associated Press, Jan. 11, 2006). See Supreme Court.