The Court held that "The Sixth Amendment requires a jury, not a judge, to find each fact necessary to impose a sentence of death.
[7] Indiana followed Florida in 1977 and enacted a similar death penalty scheme in which the jury's sentence recommendation was not binding.
[9][10] The Court had been asked to impose Florida's "great weight" standard on Alabama, but Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said that doing so would amount to micromanagement.
Later, a subsequent bill was petitioned to allow the law become retroactive and approve the re-sentencing of condemned killers affected by judicial override.
[17] Notable cases of people sentenced to death via judicial override include Thomas Dale Ferguson, who murdered a father-son pair in 1997; Oscar Roy Doster, who killed a man during a prison break; and Kenneth Eugene Smith, who was convicted of the 1988 contract killing of a woman.
[18] Delaware enacted an override statute in November 1991 after a jury had given four perpetrators life sentences for murdering two guards during an armed robbery.
In August 2016, the Delaware Supreme Court held that the judicial override made the state's death penalty statute violate the Sixth Amendment of the US Constitution.