JUSTICE O'CONNOR, with whom THE CHIEF JUSTICE, JUSTICE POWELL, and JUSTICE REHNQUIST join, dissenting.
Today the Court holds that the Eighth Amendment prohibits a State from executing a convicted felony murderer. I dissent from this holding not only because I believe that it is not supported by the analysis in our previous cases, but also because today's holding interferes with state criteria for assessing legal guilt by recasting intent as a matter of federal constitutional law.
I
The evidence at trial showed that, at approximately 7:30 a.m. on April 1, 1975, Sampson and Jeanette Armstrong approached the back door of Thomas and Eunice Kersey's farmhouse on the pretext of obtaining water for their overheated car. [ Footnote 2/1 ] When Thomas Kersey retrieved a water jug to help the Armstrongs, Sampson Armstrong grabbed him, held a gun to him, and told Jeanette Armstrong to take his wallet. Hearing her husband's cries for help, Eunice Kersey came around the side of the house with a gun and shot Jeanette Armstrong. Sampson Armstrong, and perhaps Jeanette Armstrong, returned the fire, killing both of the Kerseys. [ Footnote 2/2 ] The Armstrongs dragged the bodies into the kitchen, took Thomas Kersey's money, and fled to a nearby car, where the petitioner, Earl Enmund, was waiting to help the Armstrongs escape. Record 1348-1351. [ Footnote 2/3 ]
Ida Jean Shaw [ Footnote 2/4 ] testified that, on March 31, the petitioner and the two Armstrongs were staying at her house. When she awoke on April 1, the day of the murders, the petitioner, Jeanette, and Sampson, as well as Shaw's 1969 yellow Buick, were gone. Id. at 1185-1186. A little after eight o'clock, either the petitioner or Sampson Armstrong entered the house and told her that Jeanette had been shot. Id. at 1187-1188. After learning that Jeanette had been shot during a robbery, Shaw asked the petitioner "[w]hy he did it." Enmund answered that he had decided to rob Thomas Kersey after he had seen Kersey's money a few weeks earlier. Id. at 1205. [ Footnote 2/5 ] At the same time, Sampson Armstrong volunteered that he had made sure that the Kerseys were dead. Id. at 1207-1208.
Ida Jean Shaw also testified that, pursuant to the petitioner's and Sampson Armstrong's instructions, she had disposed of a.22-caliber pistol that she normally kept in her car, as well as a.38-caliber pistol belonging to the Armstrongs. Id. at 1198-1202. The murder weapons were never recovered. [ Footnote 2/6 ]
In his closing argument, the prosecutor did not argue that Earl Enmund had killed the Kerseys. Instead, he maintained that the petitioner had initiated and planned the armed robbery, and was in the car during the killings. According to the prosecutor, "Sampson Armstrong killed the old people." Id. at 1577. [ Footnote 2/7 ]
After deliberating for four hours, the jury found Sampson Armstrong and the petitioner each guilty of two counts of first-degree murder [ Footnote 2/8 ] and one count of robbery. [ Footnote 2/9 ] The jury then heard evidence pertaining to the appropriate sentence for the two defendants, and recommended the death penalty for each defendant on each of the murder counts. [ Footnote 2/10 ]
In its sentencing findings, [ Footnote 2/11 ] the trial court found four statutory aggravating circumstances regarding the petitioner's involvement in the murder: (1) the petitioner previously had been convicted of a felony involving the use of violence (an armed robbery in 1957), Fla.Stat. § 921.141(5)(b) (1981); (2) the murders were committed during the course of a robbery, § 921.141(5)(d); (3) the murders were committed for pecuniary gain, § 921.141(5)(f); and (4) the murders were especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel because the Kerseys had been shot in a prone position in an effort to eliminate them as witnesses, § 921.141(5)(h). App. 30-31; 399 So.2d 1362, 1371-1372 (Fla.1981). [ Footnote 2/12 ]
The trial court also found that " none of the statutory mitigating circumstances applied" to the petitioner. App. 32 (emphasis in original). Most notably, the court concluded that the evidence clearly showed that the petitioner was an accomplice to the capital felony, and that his participation had not been "relatively minor," but had been major in that he "planned the capital felony and actively participated in an attempt to avoid detection by disposing of the murder weapons." Ibid.; 399 So.2d at 1373. See Fla.Stat. § 921.141(6)(d) (1981). [ Footnote 2/13 ]
Considering these factors, the trial court concluded that the "aggravating circumstances of these capital felonies outweigh the mitigating circumstances," and imposed the death penalty for each count of murder. App. 32; 399 So.2d at 1373. The court sentenced the petitioner to life imprisonment for the robbery. App. 28. [ Footnote 2/14 ]
On appeal, the Florida Supreme Court affirmed the petitioner's convictions and sentences. [ Footnote 2/15 ] In challenging his convictions for first-degree murder, the petitioner claimed that there was no evidence that he had committed premeditated murder, or that he had been present aiding and abetting the robbery when the Kerseys were shot. He argued that, since the jury properly could have concluded only that he was in the car on the highway when the murders were committed, he could be found guilty, at most, of second-degree murder under the State's felony murder rule. [ Footnote 2/16 ]
The court rejected this argument. Quoting from an earlier case, the Florida Supreme Court held:
'[A]n individual who personally kills another during the perpetration or attempt to perpetrate one of the enumerated felonies is guilty of first degree murder…. Moreover, the felon's liability for first degree murder extends to all of his co-felons who are personally present. As perpetrators of the underlying felony, they are principals in the homicide. In Florida, as in the majority of jurisdictions, the felony murder rule and the law of principals combine to make a felon generally responsible for the lethal acts of his co-felon. Only if the felon is an accessory before the fact and not personally present does liability attach under the second degree murder provision of the applicable statute in the instant case.'
399 So.2d at 1369 (quoting Adams v. State, 341 So.2d 765, 768-769 (Fla.1976) (footnote omitted), cert. denied, 434 U.S. 878 (1977)). Consequently, the critical issue regarding liability was whether the petitioner's conduct would make him a principal or merely an accessory before the fact to the underlying robbery. Under Florida law at the time of the murders,
if the accused was present aiding and abetting the commission or attempt of one of the violent felonies listed in the first-degree murder statute, he is equally guilty, with the actual perpetrator of the underlying felony, of first-degree murder.
399 So.2d at 1370. Moreover,
'the presence of the aider and abetter need not have been actual, but it is sufficient if he was constructively present, provided the aider, pursuant to a previous understanding, is sufficiently near and so situated as to abet or encourage, or to render assistance to, the actual perpetrator in committing the felonious act or in escaping after its commission.'
Ibid. (quoting Pope v. State, 84 Fla. 428, 446, 94 So. 865, 871 (1922)).
The court noted that there
was no direct evidence at trial that Earl Enmund was present at the back door of the Kersey home when the plan to rob the elderly couple led to their being murdered.
399 So.2d at 1370. [ Footnote 2/17 ] Instead,
the only evidence of the degree of his participation is the jury's likely inference that he was the person in the car by the side of the road near the scene of the crimes. The jury could have concluded that he was there, a few hundred feet away, waiting to help the robbers escape with the Kerseys' money.
Ibid. This evidence, the court concluded, was sufficient to find the petitioner to be a principal under state law, "constructively present aiding and abetting the commission of the crime of robbery," and thus guilty of first-degree murder. Ibid.
Turning to the trial court's written sentencing findings, the State Supreme Court rejected two of the four aggravating circumstances. First, the court held that two of the trial judge's findings -that the murders were committed both in the course of robbery and for pecuniary gain -referred to the same aspect of the petitioner's crime. Consequently, these facts supported only one aggravating circumstance. Second, citing Armstrong v. State, 399 So.2d 953 (Fla.1981), the court held that "[t]he recited circumstance, that the murders were especially heinous, atrocious, and cruel, cannot be approved." 399 So.2d at 1373. [ Footnote 2/18 ] The court affirmed the trial court's findings that none of the statutory mitigating circumstances applied. Ibid. Because one of those findings was that Enmund's participation in the capital felony was not minor, due to his role in planning the robbery, the State Supreme Court implicitly affirmed the finding that Enmund had planned the robbery.
Regarding the petitioner's claim that imposition of the death penalty, absent a showing that he intended to kill, would violate the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishments, the court simply stated that the petitioner "offers us no binding legal authority that directly supports this proposition, and we therefore reject it." Id. at 1371.
II
Earl Enmund's claim in this Court is that the death sentence imposed by the Florida trial court, and affirmed by the Florida Supreme Court, is unconstitutionally disproportionate to the role he played in the robbery and murders of the Kerseys. [ Footnote 2/19 ] In particular, he contends that, because he had no actual intent to kill the victims -in effect, because his behavior and intent were no more blameworthy than that of any robber -capital punishment is too extreme a penalty. [ Footnote 2/20 ]
In Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U. S. 153 (1976), a majority of this Court concluded that the death penalty does not invariably violate the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause of the Eighth Amendment. [ Footnote 2/21 ] See id. at 428 U. S. 187 (opinion of Stewart, POWELL, and STEVENS, JJ.) ("[W]hen a life has been taken deliberately by the offender, we cannot say that the punishment is invariably disproportionate to the crime. It is an extreme sanction, suitable to the most extreme of crimes") (footnote omitted); id. at 428 U. S. 226 (opinion of WHITE, J.) (rejecting the argument that "the death penalty, however imposed and for whatever crime, is cruel and unusual punishment"); id. at 428 U. S. 227 (BLACKMUN, J., concurring in judgment). In no case since Gregg and its companion cases, [ Footnote 2/22 ] has this Court retreated from that position. [ Footnote 2/23 ] Recognizing the constitutionality of the death penalty, however, only marks the beginning of the inquiry, for Earl Enmund was not convicted of murder as it is ordinarily envisioned -a deliberate and premeditated, unlawful killing. Rather, through the doctrine of accessorial liability, the petitioner has been convicted of two murders that he did not specifically intend. [ Footnote 2/24 ] Thus, it is necessary to examine the concept of proportionality as enunciated in this Court's cases to determine whether the penalty imposed on Earl Enmund is unconstitutionally disproportionate to his crimes.
A
The Eighth Amendment concept of proportionality was first fully expressed in Weems v. United States, 217 U. S. 349 (1910). In that case, defendant Weems was sentenced to 15 years at hard labor for falsifying a public document. After remarking that "it is a precept of justice that punishment for crime should be graduated and proportioned to offense," id. at 217 U. S. 367, and after comparing Weems' punishment to the punishments for other crimes, the Court concluded that the sentence was cruel and unusual. Id. at 217 U. S. 381.
Not until two-thirds of a century later, in Coker v. Georgia, 433 U. S. 584 (1977), did the Court declare another punishment to be unconstitutionally disproportionate to the crime. Writing for himself and three other Members of the Court, JUSTICE WHITE concluded that death is a disproportionate penalty for the crime of raping an adult woman. Id. at 433 U. S. 597. [ Footnote 2/25 ] In reaching this conclusion, the plurality was careful to inform its judgment
by objective factors to the maximum possible extent [by giving attention] to the public attitudes concerning a particular sentence -history and precedent, legislative attitudes, and the response of juries reflected in their sentencing decisions.
Id. at 433 U. S. 592. The plurality's resort to objective factors was no doubt an effort to derive "from the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society" the meaning of the requirement of proportionality contained within the Eighth Amendment. Trop v. Dulles, 356 U. S. 86, 356 U. S. 101 (1958) (opinion of Warren, C.J.).
The plurality noted that, within the previous 50 years, a majority of the States had never authorized death as a punishment for rape. More significantly to the plurality, only 3 of the 35 States that immediately reinstituted the death penalty following the Court's judgment in Furman v. Georgia, 408 U. S. 238 (1972) (invalidating nearly all state capital punishment statutes), defined rape as a capital offense. [ Footnote 2/26 ] The plurality also considered
the sentencing decisions that juries have made in the course of assessing whether capital punishment is an appropriate penalty for the crime being tried.
433 U.S. at 433 U. S. 596. See Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. at 428 U. S. 181 (opinion of Stewart, POWELL, and STEVENS, JJ.) ("The jury also is a significant and reliable objective index of contemporary values because it is so directly involved"). From the available data, the plurality concluded that, in at least 90% of the rape convictions since 1973, juries in Georgia had declined to impose the death penalty. 433 U.S. at 433 U. S. 597.
Thus, the conclusion reached in Coker rested in part on the Court's observation that both legislatures and juries firmly rejected the penalty of death for the crime of rape. See Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U. S. 280, 428 U. S. 293 (1976) (opinion of Stewart, POWELL, and STEVENS, JJ.) (concluding that the State's mandatory death penalty statute violates the Eighth Amendment because the "two crucial indicators of evolving standards of decency respecting the imposition of punishment in our society -jury determinations and legislative enactments -both point conclusively to the repudiation of automatic death sentences").
In addition to ascertaining "contemporary standards," the plurality opinion also considered qualitative factors bearing on the question whether the death penalty was disproportionate, for
the Constitution contemplates that, in the end, our own judgment will be brought to bear on the question of the acceptability of the death penalty under the Eighth Amendment.
433 U.S. at 433 U. S. 597. The plurality acknowledged that a rapist is almost as blameworthy as a murderer, describing the crime of rape as "highly reprehensible, both in a moral sense and in its almost total contempt for the personal integrity and autonomy of the female victim." Ibid. Despite the enormity of the crime of rape, however, the Court concluded that the death penalty was "grossly out of proportion to the severity of the crime," id. at 433 U. S. 592, in part because the harm caused by a rape "does not compare with murder, which does involve the unjustified taking of human life." Id. at 433 U. S. 598.
Coker teaches, therefore, that proportionality -at least as regards capital punishment -not only requires an inquiry into contemporary standards as expressed by legislators and jurors, but also involves the notion that the magnitude of the punishment imposed must be related to the degree of the harm inflicted on the victim, as well as to the degree of the defendant's blameworthiness. [ Footnote 2/27 ] Moreover, because they turn on considerations unique to each defendant's case, these latter factors underlying the concept of proportionality are reflected in this Court's conclusion in Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U. S. 586, 438 U. S. 605 (1978), that "individualized consideration [is] a constitutional requirement in imposing the death sentence" (opinion of BURGER, C.J.) (footnote omitted). See id. at 438 U. S. 613 (opinion of BLACKMUN, J.) ("the Ohio judgment in this case improperly provided the death sentence for a defendant who only aided and abetted a murder, without permitting any consideration by the sentencing authority of the extent of her involvement, or the degree of her mens rea, in the commission of the homicide").
In sum, in considering the petitioner's challenge, the Court should decide not only whether the petitioner's sentence of death offends contemporary standards as reflected in the responses of legislatures and juries, but also whether it is disproportionate to the harm that the petitioner caused and to the petitioner's involvement in the crime, as well as whether the procedures under which the petitioner was sentenced satisfied the constitutional requirement of individualized consideration set forth in Lockett.
B
Following the analysis set forth in Coker, the petitioner examines the historical development of the felony murder rule, as well as contemporary legislation and jury verdicts in capital cases, in an effort to show that imposition of the death penalty on him would violate the Eighth Amendment. This effort fails, however, for the available data do not show that society has rejected conclusively the death penalty for felony murderers.
As the petitioner acknowledges, the felony murder doctrine, and its corresponding capital penalty, originated hundreds of years ago, [ Footnote 2/28 ] and was a fixture of English common law until 1957, when Parliament declared that an unintentional killing during a felony would be classified as manslaughter. [ Footnote 2/29 ] The common law rule was transplanted to the American Colonies, and its use continued largely unabated into the 20th century, although legislative reforms often restricted capital felony murder to enumerated violent felonies. [ Footnote 2/30 ]
The petitioner discounts the weight of this historical precedent by arguing that jurors and judges widely resisted the application of capital punishment by acquitting defendants in felony murder cases or by convicting them of noncapital manslaughter. [ Footnote 2/31 ] The force of the petitioner's argument is speculative, at best, however, for it is unclear what fraction of the jury nullification in this country resulted from dissatisfaction with the capital felony murder rule. Much of it, surely, was a reaction to the mandatory death penalty, and the failure of the common law and early state statutes to classify murder by degree. In fact, it was in response to juror attitudes toward capital punishment that most jurisdictions by the early part of this century replaced their mandatory death penalty statutes with statutes allowing juries the discretion to decide whether to impose or to recommend the death penalty. See Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U.S. at 428 U. S. 291 -292 (opinion of Stewart, POWELL, and STEVENS, JJ.). [ Footnote 2/32 ] Thus, it simply is not possible to conclude that historically this country conclusively has rejected capital punishment for homicides committed during the course of a felony. The petitioner and the Court turn to jury verdicts in an effort to show that, by present standards at least, capital punishment is grossly out of proportion to the crimes that the petitioner committed. Surveying all reported appellate court opinions since 1954 involving executions, the petitioner has found that, of the 362 individuals executed for homicide, 339 personally committed the homicidal assault, and two others each had another person commit the homicide on his behalf. Only six persons executed were "non-triggermen." [ Footnote 2/33 ] A similar trend can be seen in the petitioner's survey of the current death row population. [ Footnote 2/34 ] Of the 739 prisoners for whom sufficient data are available, only 40 did not participate in the homicidal assault, and, of those, only 3 (including the petitioner) were sentenced to death absent a finding that they had collaborated with the killer in a specific plan to kill. Brief for Petitioner 336. See also App. to Reply Brief for Petitioner (showing that of the 45 felony murderers currently on death row in Florida, 36 were found by the State Supreme Court or a trial court to have had the intent to kill; in 8 cases, the state courts made no finding, but the defendant was the triggerman; and in 1, the petitioner's case, the defendant was not the triggerman, and there was no finding of intent to kill). Impressive as these statistics are at first glance, they cannot be accepted uncritically. So stated, the data do not reveal the number or fraction of homicides that were charged as felony murders, or the number or fraction of cases in which the State sought the death penalty for an accomplice guilty of felony murder. Consequently, we cannot know the fraction of cases in which juries rejected the death penalty for accomplice felony murder. Moreover, as JUSTICE BLACKMUN pointed out in his concurring opinion in Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U.S. at 438 U. S. 615, n. 2, many of these data classify defendants by whether they "personally committed a homicidal assault," and do not show the fraction of capital defendants who were shown to have an intent to kill. While the petitioner relies on the fact that he did not pull the trigger, his principal argument is, and must be, that death is an unconstitutional penalty absent an intent to kill, for otherwise defendants who hire others to kill would escape the death penalty. See n. 20, supra. Thus, the data he presents are not entirely relevant. Even accepting the petitioner's facts as meaningful, they may only reflect that sentencers are especially cautious in imposing the death penalty, and reserve that punishment for those defendants who are sufficiently involved in the homicide, whether or not there was specific intent to kill.
Finally, as the petitioner acknowledges, the jury verdict statistics cannot be viewed in isolation from state death penalty legislation. The petitioner and the Court therefore review recent legislation in order to support the conclusion that society has rejected capital felony murder. Of the 35 States that presently have a death penalty, however, fully 31 authorize a sentencer to impose a death sentence for a death that occurs during the course of a robbery. [ Footnote 2/35 ] The States are not uniform in delimiting the circumstances under which the death penalty may be imposed for felony murder, but each state statute can be classified as one of three types. The first category, containing 20 statutes, includes those States that permit imposition of the death penalty for felony murder even though the defendant did not commit the homicidal act, and even though he had no actual intent to kill. [ Footnote 2/36 ] Three additional States, while requiring some finding of intent, do not require the intent to kill that the petitioner believes is constitutionally mandated before the death sentence may be imposed. [ Footnote 2/37 ] The second category, containing seven statutes, includes those States that authorize the death penalty only if the defendant had the specific intent (or some rough equivalent) to kill the victim. [ Footnote 2/38 ] The third class of statutes, from only three States, restricts application of the death penalty to those felony murderers who actually commit the homicide. [ Footnote 2/39 ] The Court's curious method of counting the States that authorize imposition of the death penalty for felony murder cannot hide the fact that 23 States permit a sentencer to impose the death penalty even though the felony murderer has neither killed nor intended to kill his victim. While the Court acknowledges that eight state statutes follow the Florida death penalty scheme, see ante at 458 U. S. 789, n. 5, it also concedes that 15 other statutes permit imposition of the death penalty where the defendant neither intended to kill or actually killed the victims. See ante at 458 U. S. 790, n. 8 (Arkansas, Delaware, and Kentucky); ante at 458 U. S. 793 -794, n. 15 (New Mexico); ante at 458 U. S. 791, n. 10 (Colorado); ante at 458 U. S. 791, n. 11 (Vermont); ante at 458 U. S. 792, n. 12 (Arizona, Connecticut, Indiana, Montana, Nebraska, and North Carolina); ante at 458 U. S. 792, n. 13 (Idaho, Oklahoma, and South Dakota). Not all of the statutes list the same aggravating circumstances. Nevertheless, the question before the Court is not whether a particular species of death penalty statute is unconstitutional, but whether a scheme that permits imposition of the death penalty, absent a finding that the defendant either killed or intended to kill the victims, is unconstitutional. In short, the Court's peculiar statutory analysis cannot withstand closer scrutiny.
Thus, in nearly half of the States, and in two-thirds of the States that permit the death penalty for murder, a defendant who neither killed the victim nor specifically intended that the victim die may be sentenced to death for his participation in the robbery-murder. Far from "weigh[ing] very heavily on the side of rejecting capital punishment as a suitable penalty for" felony murder, Coker v. Georgia, 443 U.S. at 443 U. S. 596, these legislative judgments indicate that our "evolving standards of decency" still embrace capital punishment for this crime. For this reason, I conclude that the petitioner has failed to meet the standards in Coker and Woodson that the "two crucial indicators of evolving standards of decency… -jury determinations and legislative enactments – both point conclusively to the repudiation" of capital punishment for felony murder. 428 U.S. at 428 U. S. 293 (emphasis added). In short, the death penalty for felony murder does not fall short of our national "standards of decency."
C
As I noted earlier, the Eighth Amendment concept of proportionality involves more than merely a measurement of contemporary standards of decency. It requires in addition that the penalty imposed in a capital case be proportional to the harm caused and the defendant's blameworthiness. Critical to the holding in Coker, for example, was that,
in terms of moral depravity and of the injury to the person and to the public, [rape] does not compare with murder, which… involve[s] the unjustified taking of human life.
433 U.S. at 433 U. S. 598.
Although the Court disingenuously seeks to characterize Enmund as only a "robber," ante at 458 U. S. 797, it cannot be disputed that he is responsible, along with Sampson and Jeanette Armstrong, for the murders of the Kerseys. There is no dispute that their lives were unjustifiably taken, and that the petitioner, as one who aided and abetted the armed robbery, is legally liable for their deaths. [ Footnote 2/40 ] Quite unlike the defendant in Coker, the petitioner cannot claim that the penalty imposed is "grossly out of proportion" to the harm for which he admittedly is at least partly responsible.
The Court's holding today is especially disturbing because it makes intent a matter of federal constitutional law, requiring this Court both to review highly subjective definitional problems customarily left to state criminal law and to develop an Eighth Amendment meaning of intent. As JUSTICE BLACKMUN pointed out in his concurring opinion in Lockett, the Court's holding substantially "interfere[s] with the States' individual statutory categories for assessing legal guilt." 438 U.S. at 438 U. S. 616. [ Footnote 2/41 ] See also id. at 438 U. S. 635 -636 (opinion of REHNQUIST, J.) (rejecting the idea that intent to kill must be proved before the State can impose the death penalty). Although the Court's opinion suggests that intent can be ascertained as if it were some historical fact, in fact, it is a legal concept, not easily defined. Thus, while proportionality requires a nexus between the punishment imposed and the defendant's blameworthiness, the Court fails to explain why the Eighth Amendment concept of proportionality requires rejection of standards of blameworthiness based on other levels of intent, such as, for example, the intent to commit an armed robbery coupled with the knowledge that armed robberies involve substantial risk of death or serious injury to other persons. Moreover, the intent-to-kill requirement is crudely crafted; it fails to take into account the complex picture of the defendant's knowledge of his accomplice's intent and whether he was armed, the defendant's contribution to the planning and success of the crime, and the defendant's actual participation during the commission of the crime. Under the circumstances, the determination of the degree of blameworthiness is best left to the sentencer, who can sift through the facts unique to each case. Consequently, while the type of mens rea of the defendant must be considered carefully in assessing the proper penalty, it is not so critical a factor in determining blameworthiness as to require a finding of intent to kill in order to impose the death penalty for felony murder.
In sum, the petitioner and the Court have failed to show that contemporary standards, as reflected in both jury determinations and legislative enactments, preclude imposition of the death penalty for accomplice felony murder. Moreover, examination of the qualitative factors underlying the concept of proportionality do not show that the death penalty is disproportionate as applied to Earl Enmund. In contrast to the crime in Coker, the petitioner's crime involves the very type of harm that this Court has held justifies the death penalty. Finally, because of the unique and complex mixture of facts involving a defendant's actions, knowledge, motives, and participation during the commission of a felony murder, I believe that the factfinder is best able to assess the defendant's blameworthiness. Accordingly, I conclude that the death penalty is not disproportionate to the crime of felony murder, even though the defendant did not actually kill or intend to kill his victims. [ Footnote 2/42 ]
III
Although I conclude that the death penalty is not disproportionate to the crime of felony murder, I believe that, in light of the State Supreme Court's rejection of critical factual findings, our previous opinions require a remand for a new sentencing hearing. [ Footnote 2/43 ] Repeatedly, this Court has emphasized that capital sentencing decisions must focus "on the circumstances of each individual homicide and individual defendant." Proffitt v. Florida, 428 U. S. 242, 428 U. S. 258 (1976) (opinion of Stewart, POWELL, and STEVENS, JJ.). In striking down the mandatory capital punishment statute in Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U.S. at 428 U. S. 304, a plurality of the Court wrote:
A process that accords no significance to relevant facets of the character and record of the individual offender or the circumstances of the particular offense excludes from consideration