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Concept
Furman v. Georgia
Summary
Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972), was a landmark criminal case in which the United States Supreme Court invalidated all then existing legal constructions for the death penalty in the United States. It was 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 in order to satisfy the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The decision mandated a degree of consistency in the application of the death penalty. This case resulted in a de facto moratorium of capital punishment throughout the United States, which ended when the case Gregg v. Georgia was decided in 1976 to allow the death penalty.
The Supreme Court consolidated the cases Jackson v. Georgia and Branch v. Texas with the Furman decision, thereby invalidating 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; Aikens was therefore dismissed as moot, since this decision reduced all death sentences in California to life imprisonment.
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 by 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 fired a shot blindly 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.
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