In the 1970 case of McGautha v. California, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on two consolidated cases that questioned whether a jury's discretion in deciding between life imprisonment or death violated due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. The defendants argued that without clear guidelines for determining which crimes deserved capital punishment, juries had too much arbitrary and discriminatory power. However, in a 5-4 decision, the court held that it was not unconstitutional to allow juries unrestricted discretion in choosing between life imprisonment and capital punishment for convicted murderers. The majority opinion stated there were no standards by which to measure what would make one murder more heinous than another; therefore it did not violate due process rights to leave this determination up to individual juries.

In the dissenting opinion for McGautha v. California, Justice William O. Douglas argued that leaving sentencing to the discretion of a jury without any guidelines was unconstitutional. He contended that this practice violated the Due Process Clause as it allowed juries to make arbitrary decisions based on personal biases or prejudices rather than objective standards or criteria. Furthermore, he believed that such an approach could lead to inconsistent and unpredictable outcomes in capital cases where defendants' lives were at stake. In his view, providing jurors with clear instructions about how they should weigh different factors when determining sentences would help ensure fairness and justice in these serious cases.