Furman v. Georgia
Furman v. Georgia is a landmark Supreme Court case decided in 1972 that significantly impacted the legal landscape surrounding capital punishment in the United States. At the time, there was growing public opposition to the death penalty, which led the Legal Defense Fund of the NAACP to challenge the constitutionality of death sentences, including those of William Furman and two other defendants. The Court issued a per curiam opinion which, despite its brevity, resulted in extensive individual opinions from all nine justices, totaling 243 pages. While Justices Brennan and Marshall argued that capital punishment was inherently unconstitutional, the majority recognized that the lack of clear standards for its imposition led to arbitrary and discriminatory application. This decision prompted many states to revise their death penalty statutes in hopes of aligning them with the Court's concerns. However, the constitutionality of these revisions would later be tested in the 1976 case, Gregg v. Georgia, where the Court upheld Georgia's new statute. Furman v. Georgia remains a pivotal moment in the ongoing debate over the morality, legality, and effectiveness of the death penalty in America.
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Furman v. Georgia
Date: June 29, 1972
Citation: 408 U.S. 238
Issue: Capital punishment
Significance: The Supreme Court held that capital punishment as commonly practiced in 1972 constituted cruel and unusual punishment and thus violated the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments.
By the late 1960’s the majority of Americans opposed the death penalty. The Legal Defense Fund (LDF) of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People led a legal crusade aimed at either reforming or eliminating the use of executions. In McGautha v. California (1971), the Supreme Court rejected the LDF’s argument against the imposition of the death penalty without jury guidelines and a bifurcated trial. The next year, nevertheless, the LDF reappeared before the Court and challenged the death sentences of William Furman and two other defendants. At the time, six hundred prisoners were on death row.
A majority of five justices endorsed a short per curiam opinion overturning the death penalty statute of Georgia, but there was no opinion for the majority. In fact, all nine justices wrote separate opinions, totaling some 243 pages. Only two justices, William J. Brennan Jr. and Thurgood Marshall, held that capital punishment was inherently unconstitutional. They both argued that the punishment was degrading to human dignity and that it was both unnecessary and ineffective as a deterrent to crime. In contrast, the other three justices of the majority refused to rule on the legality of capital punishment itself, but they found that the absence of clear standards for juries and judges resulted in arbitrary application of the death penalty. The four dissenters, all appointed by President Richard M. Nixon, emphasized American traditions, the Court’s precedents, and the importance of federalism.
Following the Furman decision, thirty-five state legislatures rewrote their capital punishment statutes in an attempt to satisfy the Court’s concerns. Many observers speculated that the Court would probably not approve of the revisions. In Gregg v. Georgia (1976), however, a 7-2 majority of the justices found that Georgia’s revamped statute satisfied the requirements of the Constitution.
Bibliography
Banner, Stuart. The Death Penalty: An American History. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2002. Print.
Foerster, Barrett J., and Michael Meltsner. Race, Rape, and Injustice: Documenting and Challenging Death Penalty Cases in the Civil Rights Era. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 2012. Print.
"Furman v. Georgia." LII. Cornell U Law School, n.d. Web. 7 Jan. 2016.
Latzer, Barry. Death Penalty Cases: Leading U.S. Supreme Court Cases on Capital Punishment. Burlington: Elsevier, 2011. Print.
White, James E. Contemporary Moral Problems. 10th ed. Belmont: Wadsworth, 2011. Print.
Vollum, Scott. The Death Penalty: Constitutional Issues, Commentaries, and Case Briefs. 3rd ed. Abingdon: Routledge, 2015. Digital file.