FURMAN V. GEORGIA
Year: 1972
Result: 5:4, favor Furman
Related Constitutional issue/amendment: 8th amendment (cruel or unusual punishment)
Civil Rights or Civil Liberties: Liberties
Significance/Precedent: Concurrences focusing on arbitrary death penalties forced states to reevaluate their death penalty laws to ensure that it is never imposed in a discriminatory manner. To do so would violate the 8th amendment's prohibition of cruel or unusual punishment.
Quote from majority opinion: "The Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause, like the other great clauses of the Constitution, is not susceptible of precise definition. Yet we know that the values and ideals it embodies are basic to our scheme of government. And we know also that the Clause imposes upon this Court the duty, when the issue is properly presented, to determine the constitutional validity of a challenged punishment, whatever that punishment may be... we find it quite impossible to say that committing to the untrammeled discretion of the jury the power to pronounce life or death in capital cases is offensive to anything in the Constitution."
6-word summary: death may be cruel or unusual
Result: 5:4, favor Furman
Related Constitutional issue/amendment: 8th amendment (cruel or unusual punishment)
Civil Rights or Civil Liberties: Liberties
Significance/Precedent: Concurrences focusing on arbitrary death penalties forced states to reevaluate their death penalty laws to ensure that it is never imposed in a discriminatory manner. To do so would violate the 8th amendment's prohibition of cruel or unusual punishment.
Quote from majority opinion: "The Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause, like the other great clauses of the Constitution, is not susceptible of precise definition. Yet we know that the values and ideals it embodies are basic to our scheme of government. And we know also that the Clause imposes upon this Court the duty, when the issue is properly presented, to determine the constitutional validity of a challenged punishment, whatever that punishment may be... we find it quite impossible to say that committing to the untrammeled discretion of the jury the power to pronounce life or death in capital cases is offensive to anything in the Constitution."
6-word summary: death may be cruel or unusual