Since then, constitutional challenges have been successful only in cases involving State statutes that failed to permit individualized sentencing and those in which the penalty was disproportionate to the offense. An examination of Massachusetts Supreme Court decisions since 1976 illustrates the close scrutiny given by at least one State's judiciary to legislative attempts to create a constitutionally tolerable death penalty. It also illustrates the difficulties inherent in drafting capital statutes that do not run afoul of one or another of the defendant's constitutionally secured rights quite apart from any question of the constitutionality of the death penalty per se. Finally, it illuminates the major issue in capital punishment with which State and Federal judiciaries are still grappling: Is the procedure by which the death penalty is actually administered lawful, or is it essentially lawless because it is arbitrary, capricious, unnecessary, and irremediable?