While reflecting on his fifteen-year tenure as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, Justice Lewis Powell stated that, if given the chance, he would change his vote in only one of the hundreds of cases decided during his time on the Court. In what Justice Powell later described as “a mistake,” he joined the majority and authored the 5-4 opinion of McCleskey v. Kemp. The direct effect of Justice Powell’s err in judgment was an affirmation of the lower court’s decision to uphold the death sentence for Warren McCleskey, resulting in his execution in 1991. Justice William J. Brennan’s dissent foretold of how the decision would be received; after likening the McCleskey majority to infamously derided cases Dred Scott v. Sanford and Plessy v. Ferguson, the scathing dissent closed with Justice Brennan remarking, “However many criticisms of today's decision may be rendered, these painful conversations will serve as the most eloquent dissents of all.” Since McCleskey, Justice Brennan’s words have proven prophetic since the majority opinion, although good law, is maligned by many legal scholars as endorsing unequal protection under the law on the basis of race. Justice Powell’s error in judgment has impacted the fate of every individual sentenced to death in the United States since he authored the opinion of the Court in 1987; moreover, it allowed for the pernicious racial bias in the criminal justice system to insulate itself from change, fearing that acknowledging the validity of McCleskey’s claim would “[throw] into serious question the principles that underlie our entire criminal justice system.” The apprehension on the part of the Court failed to quell doubts about invidious, irrelevant characteristics influencing the decision to take the life of a human being. To be consistent with the Constitution of the United States, there must be proof that capital sentencing statutes can operate in a way that does not inflict undue harm through arbitrary and capricious sentencing decisions. The significance of a death sentence has not been lost on the Court. Death is a consequence from a decision made in an arbitrary or capricious manner, the Court has emphasized that “death is different,” and, accordingly, requires greater safeguards when applying such a grave sentence. “[T]he qualitative difference of death from all other punishments requires a correspondingly greater degree of scrutiny of the capital sentencing determination. An exploration of McCleskey’s claims, when contrasted with of the intrinsic purpose of the death penalty as a criminal sanction, reveals the peril of affording wide discretionary latitude when determining whether to apply the irreversible sentence of death. Accordingly, the Court must critically evaluate the death penalty not as an abstract hypothetical divorced from practical application but as an irreversible punishment that impacts human beings.