Supreme Court Rules Death Penalty as Applied is Unconstitutional
In the Furman v. Georgia decision on this day, the Supreme Court held that the death penalty, as applied in the states whose laws were before the Court, was unconstitutional, in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments.
Justice Potter Steward wrote that “these death sentences are cruel and unusual in the same way that being struck by lightning is cruel and unusual.” The Court did not, however, declare the death penalty per se an unconstitutional violation of the cruel and unusual provision of the Eighth Amendment. The Justices were deeply divided over the issue of the death penalty, and all nine wrote separate opinions.
To reduce arbitrariness and discrimination in the imposition of the death penalty, 37 states revised their death penalty statutes. To reduce arbitrariness, they established a bifurcated jury process that separated the decision on guilt from the decision on the sentence, added specification of aggravating and mitigating circumstances to guide jury decision-making, and required an appellate review of death sentences.
By invalidating all state death penalty laws, the court created a de facto moratorium on executions while states revised their sentencing laws to comply with the terms of the Furman decision. Four years later, in Gregg v. Georgia, decided on July 2, 1976, the Court upheld the revised death penalty statutes under review because they provided procedural safeguards to reduce the possibility of unfairness.
The per curiam opinion: “The Court holds that the imposition and carrying out of the death penalty in these cases constitute cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. The judgment in each case is therefore reversed insofar as it leaves undisturbed the death sentence imposed, and the cases are remanded for further proceedings.”
Read: David Oshinsky, Capital Punishment on Trial: Furman v. Georgia and the Death Penalty in Modern America (2010)
Learn more at the Death Penalty Information Center: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/
Learn more: Stuart Banner, The Death Penalty: An American History (2002)
Listen to the oral arguments before the Supreme Court: http://www.oyez.org/cases/1970-1979/1971/1971_69_5003