Furman v. Georgia

History

Prior to the 1960s, courts uniformly supported the constitutionality of the death penalty. However, during the civil rights movement, a number of cases brought by death row inmates successfully challenged many of the legal and social assumptions that underpinned capital punishment. One of the first shifts toward challenging the death penalty actually occurred in the unrelated case of Trop v. Dulles (1958) where it was successfully argued that the framers of the Eighth Amendment inserted an “evolving standard of decency that marked the progress of a maturing society.”

This decision was applied 10 years later in the case of United States v. Jackson (1968) where the court held that the sole discretion given to juries to determine the death penalty was unconstitutional because it forced defendants to waive right to jury trial in order to escape the death penalty. It further appeared in Witherspoon v. Illinois (1968) where it was ruled unconstitutional to exclude a juror who had reservations about the death penalty but who could still reach a reasonable decision on a capital case.

In 1971, the cases of Crampton v. Ohio and McGautha v. California challenged the death penalty on the basis of the due process rights of the Fourteenth Amendment but the Supreme Court disagreed with their claims and gave the jury full discretion in the determination of the death penalty on the basis that it was “humanly impossible” to guide the sentencing discretion of the jury. The next year, Furman v. Georgia reopened this challenge by arguing that jury decisions were evidently arbitrary and capricious and therefore “cruel and unusual” contrary to the provisions of the Eighth Amendment. This time, the court agreed by 5–4 majority, thereby voiding the death penalty statutes in 39 states and those of the federal government, commuting 629 pending death sentences across the country and imposing a moratorium on further death sentences until there were adequate safeguards against arbitrary and capricious jury sentencing decisions. Four years later, new death penalty statutes were once again ruled constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court following the challenge of Gregg v. Georgia in 1976.

Background to Furman v. Georgia

In many ways, Furman was a lucky man. This is not just because he saved his own life and those of 629 other death row inmates by appealing against the death penalty and winning but also because he was not the only one whose case was decided on the same day. Instead, he was the first of three appellants to file appeals with the U.S. Supreme Court in 1969 (as his case number indicates, No. 69–5003). As a result, it could have been the name of Jackson as in Jackson v. Georgia (No. 69–5030) or that of Branch as in Branch v. Texas (No. 69–5031) that would be remembered widely today. In fact, the other two cases should actually be more well known than Furman's because their rulings have endured longer. The cases of Branch and Jackson finally ended the use of death penalty for rape, for which African American men were overwhelmingly executed in America prior to 1972. Their victories were solidified in 1976 when the U.S. Supreme Court clearly prohibited states from punishing rape with death in the case of Coker v. Georgia.

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