In the case of John Joseph Romano v. Oklahoma, 1993, Romano was convicted for two counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to death in an Oklahoma court. He appealed his sentence to the U.S Supreme Court on grounds that evidence from a separate murder charge (for which he had also been convicted) was introduced during the sentencing phase of his trial. This, he argued, violated his Eighth Amendment rights against cruel and unusual punishment as it created bias among jurors who were deciding whether or not to impose capital punishment. The Supreme Court ruled against him in a 5-4 decision stating that any potential prejudice did not rise to a level violating constitutional protections because this information would have come out anyway during cross-examination if Romano had testified about his character or criminal history at sentencing.

In the dissenting opinion for Romano v. Oklahoma, it was argued that the introduction of evidence regarding a separate murder conviction during sentencing in a capital case violated the defendant's constitutional rights. The dissenting justices believed this information could have unduly influenced the jury to vote for death penalty due to his perceived future dangerousness rather than focusing on whether he deserved such punishment based solely on facts and circumstances of crime he was being tried for. They also pointed out that there were no instructions given by trial court limiting how jurors should consider this extraneous information which further increased chances of prejudice against Romano. Furthermore, they disagreed with majority's reliance on state appellate court’s harmless error analysis as it failed to properly evaluate potential impact of this error on jury’s decision-making process.