(The eighth amendment by Nick Youngson, CC BY-SA 3.0. View the Original Image.
Introduction
Petitioner, William Henry Furman, was found by a family member in the action of burglarizing their private home. After being discovered, he made efforts to escape but happened to trip and fall in the process, leading the gun he was in possession of to trigger and go off, killing one of the residents in the home. Within the midst of his convictions on account of murder and being sentenced to death, this case was being decided along with two other capital punishment cases known as Jackson v. Georgia and Branch v. Texas. Amongst all three cases, Furman’s case was the first instance in which SCOTUS indirectly visited the issue of racial discrimination in the administration of the death penalty in consolidation of the three Black defendants being sentenced to death.
Issue & Rule
Upon facing the potential death penalty sentence, this case involved a challenge of the death penalty being applied within cases such as rape or murder, and if such penalties fell under the 8th amendment’s clause of “cruel and unusual punishment” and the 14th Amendment’s due process clause. The defendants’ claim of their punishments in violation of both the 8th and 14th Amendments was built upon the reasoning that preceding defendants who had committed crimes on an equal or extensive level of seriousness were not put under the same circumstances.
Analysis & Conclusion
When looking at the defendants’ argument, it was made in the assertion that the arbitrary level of punishment was in relation to the factor of race. Although such cases were ultimately a victory for all of the defendants, the plurality’s opinion had fallen short of the goal of diminishing or acknowledging the influence of racial prejudice in imposing the death penalty. Even though the conclusion of all three of these capital punishment cases concluded in the identification of the constitutional violations, there was no genuine acknowledgement of the real harm in discriminating against racial minorities.
The application of the death penalty sentence often imposed a racial bias specifically against Black defendants. Eighty percent of all capital cases involve white victims to which, as of October 2002, 12 people had been executed where the defendant had been white and the murder victim had been Black in comparison to 178 defendants who were Black that had been executed with murder victims who were white.
The majority ultimately found that the application of the death penalty in such cases constituted cruel and unusual punishment and was in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause. For all precedent-setting opinions, Justices White, Stewart, and Douglas offered a narrow and least race-conscious basis for their relief. The three justices argued that the statutes in which the defendants had been sentenced violated due process because they provided no standard for decision-making, leaving to “the uncontrolled discretion of judges or juries the determination of whether defendants committing these crimes should die or be imprisoned”. The application of the death sentence was arbitrary in nature, constituting cruel and unusual punishment considering that this particular level of punishment often presented a racial bias against defendants who are Black.
Impact
As a result of the Furman decision, there was a requirement in formation to place a four year moratorium on all executions until more guidance was received from a court challenge. In terms of its impact on death penalty cases, this decision had outlawed such punishment as cruel and unusual under the Eighth Amendment and also in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. In 1976, a series called the “Gregg Cases” had deemed capital punishment as legal but under a restricted amount of circumstances. The Furman decision managed to put national executions to a halt for a period of time between 1968-76. As it remains to be a contentious issue, as of 2019, 30 states still put such execution into practice. Legal scholars have suggested that the long term efficacy of this decision has been affected due to ranging differences in opinion amongst the justice bench.
References
- Bell, Derrick. 2000. Race, racism, and American law. Gaithersburg, MD: Aspen Law & Business.
- "Furman v. Georgia." Oyez. Accessed August 3, 2022. https://www.oyez.org/cases/1971/69-5030.
- "Race and the Death Penalty." American Civil Liberties Union. https://www.aclu.org/other/race-and-death-penalty.
- Spitzer, Elianna. "Furman v. Georgia: Supreme Court Case, Arguments, Impact." ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/furman-v-georgia-4777712.