Lockhart v. McCree

The majority rejected McCree's claim that the "death qualification" results in impartial juries, pointing to flaws in the evidence used by the lower courts to assert the opposite. The majority went on to point out that the same jury would have been chosen even had no "death qualifying" questions been asked of them. Besides, both parties in the case had conceded that the individual jurors in this case had been impartial.

On the question of the Sixth Amendment, the majority ruled that the constitutional rule that a jury must represent a "fair cross section" of the community did not apply in this case. Furthermore, even if it had, the majority refused to categorize death penalty opponents as the kind of "distinctive group" that cannot be excluded from juries. According to the majority, the term "distinctive groups" was meant to indicate race, gender, or national origin, not groups of people with shared opinions or political beliefs. It would be wildly impractical, according to the majority, for judges to spend time and energy balancing out different viewpoints and backgrounds on a jury.

Finally, there was the issue of the "two stage" jury. Here, the majority ruled that state prosecutors have a proper interest in making sure they can get a single jury to decide on both the evidence in the case and on whether to seek the death penalty if the defendant is convicted. Therefore, it is permissible for them to exclude opponents of the death penalty from the panel.