Furman v. Georgia
Encyclopedia
Furman v. Georgia, was a United States Supreme Court
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...

 decision that ruled on the requirement for a degree of consistency in the application of the death penalty
Capital punishment in the United States
Capital punishment in the United States, in practice, applies only for aggravated murder and more rarely for felony murder. Capital punishment was a penalty at common law, for many felonies, and was enforced in all of the American colonies prior to the Declaration of Independence...

. The case led to a de facto moratorium
Moratorium (law)
A moratorium is a delay or suspension of an activity or a law. In a legal context, it may refer to the temporary suspension of a law to allow a legal challenge to be carried out....

 on capital punishment throughout the United States, which came to an end when Gregg v. Georgia
Gregg v. Georgia
Gregg v. Georgia, Proffitt v. Florida, Jurek v. Texas, Woodson v. North Carolina, and Roberts v. Louisiana, 428 U.S. 153 , reaffirmed the United States Supreme Court's acceptance of the use of the death penalty in the United States, upholding, in particular, the death sentence imposed on Troy Leon...

was decided in 1976.

The Supreme Court consolidated Jackson v. Georgia and Branch v. Texas with the Furman decision, and thus also invalidated the death penalty for rape
Rape
Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority or with a person who is incapable of valid consent. The...

 (which was confirmed post-Gregg in Coker v. Georgia
Coker v. Georgia
Coker v. Georgia, , held that the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution forbade the death penalty for the crime of rape of a woman.-Facts:...

). The Court had also intended to include the case of Aikens v. California
Aikens v. California
Aikens v. California, was a decision of the United States Supreme Court where a petitioner was appealing his conviction and death sentence. After oral argument had been made on the case, but before the court decided on it, the California Supreme Court in California v. Anderson, 6 Cal. 3d 628 ,...

, but between the time Aikens had been heard in oral argument and a decision was to be issued, the Supreme Court of California
Supreme Court of California
The Supreme Court of California is the highest state court in California. It is headquartered in San Francisco and regularly holds sessions in Los Angeles and Sacramento. Its decisions are binding on all other California state courts.-Composition:...

 decided in California v. Anderson
California v. Anderson
The People of the State of California v. Robert Page Anderson, 493 P.2d 880, 6 Cal. 3d 628 , was a landmark case in the state of California that outlawed the use of capital punishment...

that the death penalty violated the state constitution, thus the Aikens case was dismissed as moot since all death cases in California were overturned.

Background

In the Furman v. Georgia case, the victim awoke in the middle of the night to find William Henry Furman
William Henry Furman
William Henry Furman is an American convicted felon who was the central figure in Furman v. Georgia, the case in which the United States Supreme Court outlawed most uses of the death penalty in the United States...

 burgling
Burglary
Burglary is a crime, the essence of which is illicit entry into a building for the purposes of committing an offense. Usually that offense will be theft, but most jurisdictions specify others which fall within the ambit of burglary...

 in his house. At trial, in an unsworn statement allowed under Georgia criminal procedure, Furman said that while trying to escape, he tripped and the weapon he was carrying fired accidentally, killing the victim. This contradicted his prior statement to police that he had turned and blindly fired a shot while fleeing. In either event, because
Felony murder rule
The rule of felony murder is a legal doctrine in some common law jurisdictions that broadens the crime of murder in two ways. First, when an offender kills accidentally or without specific intent to kill in the course of an applicable felony, what might have been manslaughter is escalated to murder...

 the shooting occurred during the commission of a felony, Furman would have been guilty of murder and eligible for the death penalty under then-extant state law. Furman was tried for murder and was found guilty based largely on his own statement. He was sentenced to death. Although he was sentenced to death, the punishment was never carried out.

Jackson v. Georgia, like Furman, was also a death penalty case confirmed by the Supreme Court of Georgia. Unlike Furman however, the convicted in Jackson had not killed, but attempted to commit armed robbery and committed rape in the process of doing so. Branch v. Texas was brought to the Supreme Court of the United States on appeal on certiorari to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals
Texas Court of Criminal Appeals
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals is the court of last resort for all criminal matters in the State of Texas, United States. The Court, which is based in the Supreme Court Building in Downtown Austin, is composed of a Presiding Judge and eight judges....

. Like Jackson, Branch was convicted of rape.

Holding

In a 5-4 decision, the Court's one-page per curiam opinion held that the imposition of the death penalty in these cases constituted cruel and unusual punishment
Cruel and unusual punishment
Cruel and unusual punishment is a phrase describing criminal punishment which is considered unacceptable due to the suffering or humiliation it inflicts on the condemned person...

 and violated the Constitution. Each of the justices filed their own concurrence
Concurring opinion
In law, a concurring opinion is a written opinion by one or more judges of a court which agrees with the decision made by the majority of the court, but states different reasons as the basis for his or her decision...

 or dissent
Dissenting opinion
A dissenting opinion is an opinion in a legal case written by one or more judges expressing disagreement with the majority opinion of the court which gives rise to its judgment....

; none were able to gather more than three other justices to support them. Only Justices Brennan and Marshall
Thurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, serving from October 1967 until October 1991...

 believed the death penalty to be unconstitutional in all instances. Other concurrences focused on the arbitrary nature with which death sentences have been imposed, often indicating a racial bias against black
Black
Black is the color of objects that do not emit or reflect light in any part of the visible spectrum; they absorb all such frequencies of light...

 defendants. The Court's decision forced states and the national legislature to rethink their statutes for capital offenses to assure that the death penalty would not be administered in a capricious or discriminatory manner.

Analysis

Although Furman didn't have the whole consent of the panel of judges, he still had a glimpse of winning. The Supreme Court split five to four in overturning the imposition of the death penalty in each of the consolidated cases. The majority could not agree as to a rationale and did not produce a controlling opinion. Instead, each of the nine justices wrote separately, with none of the five justices constituting the majority joining in the opinion of any other.

Justice Potter Stewart
Potter Stewart
Potter Stewart was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. During his tenure, he made, among other areas, major contributions to criminal justice reform, civil rights, access to the courts, and Fourth Amendment jurisprudence.-Education:Stewart was born in Jackson, Michigan,...

, as one of the majority, wrote that:

"These death sentences are cruel and unusual
Cruel and unusual punishment
Cruel and unusual punishment is a phrase describing criminal punishment which is considered unacceptable due to the suffering or humiliation it inflicts on the condemned person...

 in the same way that being struck by lightning is cruel and unusual. For, of all the people convicted of rapes and murders in 1967 and 1968, many just as reprehensible as these, the petitioners are among a capriciously selected random handful upon whom the sentence of death has in fact been imposed. My concurring Brothers have demonstrated that, if any basis can be discerned for the selection of these few to be sentenced to death, it is the constitutionally impermissible basis of race. See McLaughlin v. Florida
McLaughlin v. Florida
McLaughlin v. Florida 379 U.S. 184 , was a case in which the United States Supreme Court ruled unanimously that a cohabitation law of Florida, part of the state's anti-miscegenation laws, was unconstitutional. The law prohibited habitual cohabitation by two unmarried people of opposite sex, if one...

, 379 U.S. 184 (1964) But racial discrimination has not been proved, and I put it to one side. I simply conclude that the Eighth
Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution is the part of the United States Bill of Rights which prohibits the federal government from imposing excessive bail, excessive fines or cruel and unusual punishments. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that this amendment's Cruel and Unusual...

 and Fourteenth Amendments
Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments.Its Citizenship Clause provides a broad definition of citizenship that overruled the Dred Scott v...

 cannot tolerate the infliction of a sentence of death under legal systems that permit this unique penalty to be so wantonly and so freakishly imposed."

Concurrences

  • Justices Byron White
    Byron White
    Byron Raymond "Whizzer" White won fame both as a football halfback and as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Appointed to the court by President John F. Kennedy in 1962, he served until his retirement in 1993...

     and William O. Douglas
    William O. Douglas
    William Orville Douglas was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. With a term lasting 36 years and 209 days, he is the longest-serving justice in the history of the Supreme Court...

     expressed similar concerns about the apparent arbitrariness with which death sentences were imposed under the existing laws.

  • Justices Brennan and Marshall
    Thurgood Marshall
    Thurgood Marshall was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, serving from October 1967 until October 1991...

     concurred on the grounds that the death penalty was "cruel and unusual punishment" proscribed by the Eighth Amendment as incompatible with the evolving standards of decency of a contemporary society. Because the opinions of Justices Stewart
    Potter Stewart
    Potter Stewart was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. During his tenure, he made, among other areas, major contributions to criminal justice reform, civil rights, access to the courts, and Fourth Amendment jurisprudence.-Education:Stewart was born in Jackson, Michigan,...

     and White
    Byron White
    Byron Raymond "Whizzer" White won fame both as a football halfback and as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Appointed to the court by President John F. Kennedy in 1962, he served until his retirement in 1993...

     were the narrowest, finding only that the death penalty as applied under the statutes in existence at the time was cruel and unusual, theirs are often considered the controlling majority opinions.

Dissents

Chief Justice Burger
Warren E. Burger
Warren Earl Burger was the 15th Chief Justice of the United States from 1969 to 1986. Although Burger had conservative leanings, the U.S...

 and Justices Harry Blackmun
Harry Blackmun
Harold Andrew Blackmun was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1970 until 1994. He is best known as the author of Roe v. Wade.- Early years and professional career :...

, Lewis F. Powell, and William H. Rehnquist, each appointed by President Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...

, dissented. They argued that capital punishment had always been regarded as appropriate under the Anglo-American legal tradition
Common law
Common law is law developed by judges through decisions of courts and similar tribunals rather than through legislative statutes or executive branch action...

 for serious crimes and that the text of the Constitution implicitly authorized United States death penalty laws
Capital punishment in the United States
Capital punishment in the United States, in practice, applies only for aggravated murder and more rarely for felony murder. Capital punishment was a penalty at common law, for many felonies, and was enforced in all of the American colonies prior to the Declaration of Independence...

 because of the reference in the Fourteenth Amendment to the taking of "life."

Aftermath

In the following four years, 37 states enacted new death penalty laws aimed at overcoming the court's concerns about arbitrary imposition of the death penalty. Several statutes mandating bifurcated trials, with separate guilt-innocence and sentencing phases, and imposing standards to guide the discretion of juries and judges in imposing capital sentences, were upheld in a series of Supreme Court decisions in 1976, led by Gregg v. Georgia
Gregg v. Georgia
Gregg v. Georgia, Proffitt v. Florida, Jurek v. Texas, Woodson v. North Carolina, and Roberts v. Louisiana, 428 U.S. 153 , reaffirmed the United States Supreme Court's acceptance of the use of the death penalty in the United States, upholding, in particular, the death sentence imposed on Troy Leon...

. Other statutes enacted in response to Furman which mandated imposition of the death penalty upon conviction of a certain crime were struck down in cases of that same year.

See also

  • Capital punishment in the United States
    Capital punishment in the United States
    Capital punishment in the United States, in practice, applies only for aggravated murder and more rarely for felony murder. Capital punishment was a penalty at common law, for many felonies, and was enforced in all of the American colonies prior to the Declaration of Independence...

  • List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 408
  • Capital Jury Project
    Capital Jury Project
    The Capital Jury Project is a consortium of university-based research studies on the decision-making of jurors in death penalty cases in the United States. It was founded in 1991 and is supported by the National Science Foundation...

  • McCleskey v. Kemp
    McCleskey v. Kemp
    McCleskey v. Kemp, 481 U.S. 279 , was a United States Supreme Court court case, in which the death penalty sentencing of McCleskey for armed robbery and murder was upheld...


External links

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