In Pulley v. Harris (1984), the U.S. Supreme Court held that the eighth amendment does not require a State appellate court to compare the sentence in the case before it with penalties imposed in similar cases throughout the State before it affirms a death sentence. In Ford v. Wainwright (1986), the Court held that the eighth amendment granted incompetent persons a substantive right in avoiding execution for the duration of their incompetency. This substantive right entitled the defendant to procedural due process protections on the issue of whether he was insane. This note argues that in view of the Court's due-process analysis in "Ford," the issue of whether a proportionality review of all death sentences is constitutionally required should be reconsidered. In addition to arguing that the due process clause requires a proportionality review in capital cases, the article shows that State laws requiring a proportionality review create an entitlement protected by the fourteenth amendment. 170 footnotes