In the case of Wesley Aaron Shafer Jr. v. South Carolina in 2000, the U.S Supreme Court ruled that a defendant facing capital punishment has the right to inform jurors about their ability to issue a lesser sentence if they find him guilty but have residual doubt about his guilt. The court held that due process requires this information be provided when state law gives jurors discretion to decide between life imprisonment and death penalty upon conviction for murder. In this case, Shafer was convicted of murder and sentenced to death by a jury who were not informed they could choose life imprisonment without parole as an alternative sentence even with lingering doubts over his guilt.

In the dissenting opinion for Wesley Aaron Shafer, Jr. v. South Carolina, Justice Scalia argued that the majority's decision was not based on any constitutional principle but rather a desire to micromanage state court procedures. He contended that there is no constitutional requirement for judges to instruct juries about parole eligibility and disagreed with the majority’s view that due process requires such instruction when future dangerousness is at issue in capital sentencing proceedings. He also criticized the Court's reliance on Simmons v. South Carolina as precedent because he believed it did not apply since this case involved different circumstances regarding parole eligibility information disclosure during trial proceedings.