This article, one of a series, examines the numerous, specific aggravating circumstances that are employed in death penalty statutes across the country. The primary focus is on significant differences in how aggravating factors are conceptualized and then articulated in the different capital sentencing schemes. The authors also examine the strengths and weaknesses of alternative specifications of these statutory aggravating factors. The authors' position is that aggravating circumstances are supposed to narrow the class of death penalty-eligible offenses by providing reasons that justify treating the resulting subgroup of murders as capital offenses and to promote one or more of the recognized objectives of capital punishment. Frequently, they fall short of satisfying one or both of these requirements. Careful reforms of aggravating sentencing circumstances could help to reduce the potential for arbitrariness that inheres in enforcing death penalty statutes that are unnecessarily imprecise or overly broad. Such reforms should be encouraged and aggressively pursued in Congress and the State legislatures. Footnotes