About: McGautha v. California

McGautha v. California, 402 U.S. 183 (1971), is a criminal case heard by the United States Supreme Court, in which the Court held that the lack of legal standards by which juries imposed the death penalty was not an unconstitutional violation of the due process clause portion of the Eighth Amendment. Justice Harlan wrote that writing rules for jury death penalty decisions was beyond current human ability. The context was public and philosophical scrutiny of the unequal application of the death penalty, especially in that blacks who killed whites were much more likely to have a death penalty imposed. McGautha was superseded one year later by Furman v. Georgia, which held that sentencing discretion must be narrowed "so as to minimize the risk of wholly arbitrary and capricious action."