In the case of Paul Palalaua Tuilaepa v. California, 1993, the U.S Supreme Court examined whether certain factors used by California to determine eligibility for a death sentence were too vague and therefore violated the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. The petitioner, Paul Palalaua Tuilaepa had been convicted of murder and sentenced to death in California state court. He challenged two specific factors that juries could consider when deciding on a death sentence: whether "the crime involved 'an express or implied threat to others'" and if it exhibited "depravity". The Supreme Court upheld these considerations as constitutional with a majority vote of 7-2. They reasoned that these factors did not invite arbitrary or capricious sentencing but rather allowed jurors to make an individualized determination about each defendant’s moral culpability.

In the dissenting opinion for Tuilaepa v. California, Justice Blackmun argued that the majority's decision to uphold California's capital sentencing scheme was flawed because it allowed jurors too much discretion in determining whether a defendant should be sentenced to death. He believed this violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment by creating an arbitrary and capricious system of capital punishment. Furthermore, he criticized the majority for failing to provide clear guidance on what constitutes a valid aggravating circumstance under its own precedent set in previous cases such as Godfrey v. Georgia (1980). In his view, several of California’s statutory factors were unconstitutionally vague or overly broad which could lead to inconsistent application across different cases.