sentences. Second, the scheme must allow the sentencer (whether judge or jury) to take into account the character and record of an individual defendant. In Gregg, Proffitt, and Jurek, the Court found that the capital sentencing schemes of Georgia, Florida, and Texas, respectively, met these criteria; whereas in Woodson and Roberts, the Court found that the sentencing schemes of North Carolina and Louisiana did not. Constitutional sentencing procedures The proposition that the death penalty was not always cruel and unusual punishment was just the beginning of the discussion. Furman had held that "where discretion is afforded a sentencing body on a matter so grave as the determination of whether a human life should be taken or spared, that discretion must be suitably directed and limited so as to minimize the risk of wholly arbitrary and capricious action." The question the Court confronted in these five cases was whether the procedures crafted by Georgia, Florida, Texas, North Carolina, and Louisiana adequately minimized that risk. In all five cases, the Court's primary focus was on the jury. Although in most criminal cases the judge decides and imposes the sentence, "jury sentencing has been considered desirable in capital cases in order to maintain a link between contemporary community values and the penal system—a link without which the determination of punishment could hardly reflect the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society." The drafters of the Model Penal Code concluded that the now-familiar bifurcated procedure, in which the jury first considers the question of guilt without regard to punishment, and then determines whether the punishment should be death or life imprisonment, is the preferable model. This was the model that the Court approved in these cases—although it tacitly approved a model without any jury involvement in the sentencing process, an approval that persisted until 2002's Ring v. Arizona. The drawback of having juries rather than judges fix the penalty in capital cases is the risk that they will have no frame of reference for imposing the death penalty in a rational manner. Although this problem may not be totally correctible, the Court trusted that the guidance given the jury by the aggravating factors or other special-verdict questions would assist it in deciding on a sentence. The drafters of the Model Penal Code "concluded that it is within the realm of possibility to point to the main circumstances of aggravation