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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; 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, Potter Stewart, Byron White, Thurgood Marshall, Harry Blackmun, Lewis Franklin Powell, Jr., William Rehnquist
Case opinions
Majority by: none Concurrence by: Douglas Concurrence by: Brennan Concurrence by: Stewart Concurrence by: White Concurrence by: Marshall Dissent by: Burger Joined by: Blackmun, Powell, Rehnquist Dissent by: Blackmun Dissent by: Powell Joined by: Burger, Blackmun, Rehnquist Dissent by: 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 United States Supreme Court decision that ruled on the requirement for a degree of consistency in the application of the death penalty. The Court consolidated Jackson v. Georgia and Branch v. Texas with the Furman decision, and thus also invalidated the death penalty for rape. 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, thus the Aikens case was dismissed as moot since all death cases in California were overturned.

In the Furman case, the victim returned to his house while William Henry Furman was burgling it. At trial, Furman testified that while trying to escape, he tripped and the weapon he was carrying fired accidentally. One of the homeowners was shot and killed. Furman was tried for murder and was found guilty based largely on his own testimony. He was sentenced to death.

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 an opinion, but merely a short statement announcing the result.

Justice Potter Stewart, as one of the majority, wrote that "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 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."

Justices Byron White and William O. Douglas expressed similar concerns about the apparent arbitrariness with which death sentences were imposed under the existing laws. Justices Brennan and Marshall 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.

Chief Justice Burger and Justices Harry Blackmun, Lewis F. Powell, and William H. Rehnquist, each appointed by Richard Nixon, dissented. They argued that capital punishment had always been regarded as appropriate under the Anglo-American legal tradition for serious crimes and that the text of the Constitution implicitly authorized United States death penalty laws because of the reference in the Fourteenth Amendment to the taking of "life."

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

• List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 408
• Capital Jury Project

• Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1976) (full text with links to cited material)

• "Furman v. Georgia" on Wikisource.