Furman v. Georgia - wikipedia Furman v. Georgia This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. ( December 2007 ) Furman v. Georgia Supreme Court of the United States Argued January 17, 1972 Decided June 29, 1972 Full case name William Henry Furman v. State of Georgia Citations 408 U.S. 238 ( more ) 92 S. Ct. 2726 ; 33 L. Ed. 2d 346 ; 1972 U.S. LEXIS 169 Prior history Certiorari granted ( 403 U.S. 952 ) Subsequent history Rehearing denied ( 409 U.S. 902 ) Holding The arbitrary and inconsistent imposition of the death penalty violates the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, and constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. Court membership Chief Justice Warren E. Burger Associate Justices William O. Douglas William J. Brennan, Jr. Potter Stewart Byron White Thurgood Marshall Harry Blackmun Lewis F. Powell, Jr. William Rehnquist Case opinions Per curiam. Concurrence Douglas Concurrence Brennan Concurrence Stewart Concurrence White Concurrence Marshall Dissent Burger, joined by Blackmun, Powell, Rehnquist Dissent Blackmun Dissent Powell, joined by Burger, Blackmun, Rehnquist Dissent Rehnquist, joined by Burger, Blackmun, Powell Laws applied U.S. Const. amends. VIII, XIV Wikisource has original text related to this article : Furman v. Georgia Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 ( 1972 ) was a criminal case in which the United States Supreme Court struck down all death penalty schemes in the United States in a 5 -- 4 decision, with each member of the majority writing a separate opinion. Following Furman, in order to reinstate the death penalty, states had to at least remove arbitrary and discriminatory effects, to satisfy the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The decision ruled on the requirement for a degree of consistency in the application of the death penalty. This case led to a de facto moratorium on capital punishment throughout the United States, which came to an end when Gregg v. Georgia was decided in 1976 to allow the death penalty. The Supreme Court consolidated Jackson v. Georgia and Branch v. Texas with the Furman decision, and thus also invalidated the death penalty for rape ( this ruling was confirmed post-Gregg in Coker v. Georgia ). The Court had also intended to include the case of Aikens v. California, but between the time Aikens had been heard in oral argument and a decision was to be issued, the Supreme Court of California decided in California v. Anderson that the death penalty violated the state constitution. The Aikens case was dismissed as moot since all death sentences in California were reduced to life imprisonment. Contents 1 Background 2 Decision 3 Dissents 4 Aftermath 5 See also 6 References 7 Further reading 8 External links Background In the Furman v. Georgia case, the resident awoke in the middle of the night to find William Henry Furman committing 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 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, according to the felony murder rule. Furman was tried for murder and was found guilty based largely on his own statement. 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 man in Jackson had not killed anyone, 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. Like Jackson, Branch was convicted of rape. Decision In a 5 -- 4 decision, the Court 's one - paragraph per curiam opinion held that the imposition of the death penalty in these cases constituted cruel and unusual punishment and violated the Constitution. However, the majority could not agree as to a rationale. There was no opinion of the court or plurality as none of the five justices constituting the majority joined in the opinion of any other. Justices Potter Stewart, Byron White and William O. Douglas expressed similar concerns about the apparent arbitrariness with which death sentences were imposed under the existing laws, often indicating a racial bias against black defendants. Because these opinions were the narrowest, finding only that the death penalty as currently applied was cruel and unusual, they are often considered the controlling majority opinions. Stewart wrote : These death sentences are cruel and unusual 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, 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 and Fourteenth Amendments can not tolerate the infliction of a sentence of death under legal systems that permit this unique penalty to be so wantonly and so freakishly imposed. Justices William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall concluded that the death penalty was in itself `` cruel and unusual punishment, '' and incompatible with the evolving standards of decency of a contemporary society. Dissents Chief Justice Warren Burger and Justices Harry Blackmun, Lewis F. Powell, and William H. Rehnquist, each appointed by President Richard Nixon, dissented. They argued that a punishment provided in 40 state statutes ( at the time ) and by the federal government could not be ruled contrary to the so - called `` evolving standard of decency. '' Aftermath The Furman decision caused all death sentences pending at the time to be reduced to life imprisonment, and it was described by scholars as a `` legal bombshell. '' The next day, columnist Barry Schweid wrote that it was `` unlikely '' that the death penalty could exist anymore in the United States. The Court 's decision forced states and the U.S. Congress to rethink their statutes for capital offenses to ensure that the death penalty would not be administered in a capricious or discriminatory manner. 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 that mandated 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. Other statutes enacted in response to Furman, such as Louisiana 's 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 List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 408 Gregg v. Georgia Baze v. Rees Glossip v. Gross References ^ Jump up to : Criminal Law - Cases and Materials, 7th ed. 2012, Wolters Kluwer Law & Business ; John Kaplan, Robert Weisberg, Guyora Binder, ISBN 978 - 1 - 4548 - 0698 - 1, ( 1 ) Jump up ^ `` Branch v. Texas ''. TheFreeDictionary.com. Jump up ^ Cornell University Law School. `` Furman v. Georgia ( No. 69 - 5003 ) ''. cornell.edu. Jump up ^ Barry Latzer ( 2010 ), Death Penalty Cases : Leading U.S. Supreme Court Cases on Capital Punishment, Elsevier, p. 37. Jump up ^ The Free Lance - Star - Jun 30, 1972 : `` New laws unlikely on death penalty, '' by Barry Schweid Jump up ^ `` Furman v. Georgia - The Oyez Project at IIT Chicago - Kent College of Law ''. oyez.org. Further reading Smith, Stephen F. ( 2008 ). `` The Supreme Court and the Politics of Death ''. Virginia Law Review. 94 ( 2 ) : 283 -- 383. Archived from the original on 2009 - 04 - 04. Hull, Elizabeth ( January 2010 ). `` Guilty On All Counts ''. Social Policy. 39 ( 4 ) : 11 -- 25, 15p. External links Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 ( 1972 ) ( full text with links to cited material ) Works related to Furman v. Georgia at Wikisource Retrieved from `` https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Furman_v._Georgia&oldid=815158882 '' Categories : United States Supreme Court cases Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause and death penalty case law Capital punishment in Georgia ( U.S. state ) 1972 in United States case law 20th century American trials Legal history of Georgia ( U.S. state ) American Civil Liberties Union litigation United States Supreme Court cases of the Burger Court Hidden categories : Articles needing additional references from December 2007 All articles needing additional references Articles containing Latin - language text Talk Contents About Wikipedia Français 한국어 Nederlands Polski Русский Svenska Edit links This page was last edited on 13 December 2017, at 03 : 31. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution - ShareAlike License ; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. 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Question: in furman v georgia the us supreme court recognized that
Answer: death penalty in these cases constituted cruel and unusual punishment and violated the Constitution