what elements of crimes are, the Court usually deferred to the legislature's definition of the elements that constitute a crime. She also disputed that the historical evidence cited by the majority dictated the result it reached. The fact that common-law judges may have had little discretion in imposing sentence had little bearing for her on modern sentencing schemes. Furthermore, Justice O'Connor disputed that the Court's modern cases dictated the result. Although the Court in Mullaney v. Wilbur, , may have ruled that the jury-trial and reasonable-doubt requirements applied to the facts that dictated the degree of homicide crime the defendant had committed, and thus the level of punishment to which he was subject, two years later, in Patterson v. New York, , the Court ruled that a state could place on defendants the burden of proving affirmative defenses, such as extreme emotional disturbance. Patterson, for Justice O'Connor, repudiated the general principle that facts bearing on the degree of punishment must be proved to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. Also, McMillan v. Pennsylvania, , was not relevant to the Court's rule because McMillan involved a mandatory minimum punishment, rather than a maximum sentence. Finally, Justice O'Connor warned that the Court's decision did not square with Walton v. Arizona, , in which the Court had ruled that the jury-trial requirement expressly did not apply to the aggravating factors required under Arizona law to impose a death sentence. As Justice O'Connor observed, a judge in Arizona could not impose a death sentence without a finding that one of the aggravating factors applied. Under the rule the majority adopted, that finding would have to be made by a jury, yet O'Connor found the majority's attempt to distinguish Arizona's death penalty to be "baffling." Two years later, in Ring v. Arizona, , Justice O'Connor's view about Arizona's death penalty scheme would prevail. O'Connor also predicted that the Apprendi decision would give rise to serious constitutional doubt in the federal sentencing scheme. In 2005's United States v. Booker, , this prediction also came to pass. Justice Breyer complained that the "real world of criminal justice" would not be able to meet the "ideal" of submitting to juries facts that subject criminal defendants to increased punishments. Fixing certain punishments for all defendants convicted of the same offense would ignore specific harms committed by different defendants as well as certain characteristics of individual defendants. "There are, to