guilt." There was historically no distinction between an "element" of a crime and a "sentencing factor" because the trial judge had very little discretion at sentencing, because most crimes had a specific sentence attached to them. Justice Thomas explained how the original understanding of the jury-trial requirement supported the Court's ruling. He also argued that the jury-trial requirement applied to both mandatory minimum sentences and the findings of prior convictions used to enhance sentences. To make this argument, Justice Thomas had to repudiate his prior support for the prior conviction exception crafted in Almendarez-Torres v. United States, . "What matters is the way by which a fact enters into the sentence." Even though a prior conviction may be valid because it entailed its own jury trial, the fact that that prior conviction was being used to enhance a new sentence meant that that fact must be submitted to a jury again. 20th-century developments In Williams v. New York, , the Court affirmed that a sentencing judge has discretion to impose any sentence authorized by statute in an individual case. This statement accommodated a shift in the way legislatures had set punishments between the 18th and 20th centuries — a shift away from fixed punishments and toward broader and broader ranges of punishment. This was not to say that "trial practices cannot change in the course of centuries and still remain true to the principles that emerged from the Framers' fears that the jury right could be lost not only by gross denial, but by erosion." Nevertheless, practice should at least adhere to basic principles, even as that practice evolves over the course of time. With the decision in In re Winship in 1970, the Court expressly said for the first time that due process demands from the government proof beyond a reasonable doubt of every element of a crime. Thus, the Court held that a state court could not force a defendant to prove he did not act with malice aforethought in order to avoid a murder conviction, as in Mullaney v. Wilbur, . Criminal law "is concerned not only with guilt or innocence in the abstract, but also with the degree of criminal culpability assessed" in the defendant. Thus, redefining the elements of murder to make the level of intent required bear on punishment was not an appropriate method for avoiding the reasonable-doubt requirement of the Constitution. It was