In the case of Solesbee v. Balkcom, Warden in 1949, the U.S Supreme Court was asked to consider whether a Georgia state law that allowed for a jury to determine if an individual is insane and thus ineligible for execution violated due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. The petitioner, Solesbee, had been convicted of murder and sentenced to death but claimed he became insane while on death row. A jury found him sane enough for execution after hearing evidence from psychiatrists who examined him at his trial. The Supreme Court held that this procedure did not violate due process as it provided adequate opportunity for inquiry into sanity status before carrying out capital punishment. Therefore, they upheld Georgia's law allowing juries rather than judges or other professionals to make determinations about mental competency in these cases.

In the dissenting opinion for Solesbee v. Balkcom, Justice Frankfurter argued that the court should not have dismissed Solesbee's petition for a writ of habeas corpus. He believed that there was sufficient evidence to suggest that Solesbee may have been insane at the time of his trial and therefore unable to adequately defend himself or understand the proceedings against him. According to Frankfurter, this raised serious questions about whether he had received a fair trial as guaranteed by due process under law. Furthermore, he contended that it was inappropriate for Georgia courts to determine if someone is sane enough to be executed based on their ability to distinguish between right and wrong because such an assessment does not necessarily reflect one's capacity for rational thought or understanding consequences of actions.