"[2] McCleskey has been named one of the worst Supreme Court decisions since World War II by a Los Angeles Times poll of liberal jurists.

[3] In a New York Times comment eight days after the decision, Anthony Lewis charged that the Supreme Court had "effectively condoned the expression of racism in a profound aspect of our law.

On appeal to the federal courts via a habeas petition, petitioner alleged the state's capital sentencing process was administered in a racially discriminatory manner in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.

[7] The Court, in an opinion by Justice Lewis Powell, held that the statistical study did not present substantial evidence that would require a reversal of petitioner's conviction.

The decision said that even if Baldus' statistical data were accepted at face value, the defense failed to show evidence of conscious, deliberate bias by law officials associated with the case, and it dismissed evidence of general disparities in sentencing, such as the Baldus study, as "an inevitable part of our criminal justice system.

Brennan's lengthy dissent noted at the outset the belief he shared with Justice Marshall that "the death penalty is in all circumstances cruel and unusual punishment forbidden by the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments."

Stevens did not go so far as to suggest that the death penalty was inherently inappropriate under these circumstances but stated that the case should have been remanded to the Court of Appeals for a determination of the validity of the Baldus study.

McCleskey has been used to illustrate that claims based on government denial of "equal protection of the laws" to racial minorities may fail unless something more than discriminatory effect can be shown.

[11][editorializing] Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, has criticized the decision: McClesky versus Kemp has immunized the criminal justice system from judicial scrutiny for racial bias.