Case Study: Furman V. Georgia

Furman v. Georgia Paper
Mary Amon
CJS/221
University of Phoenix
Gaylia Clark

William Henry Furman v. State of Georgia
In the year 1972, January in the State of Georgia. A gentleman named William Henry Furman went into a house to rob. In the middle of that night the resident woke up to see Furman robbing the house. In the process of escaping Furman tripped and his firearm fell and went off at that very time, killing the resident. The death was a tragic one, if one could describe. Furman did not plan or had any intention of killing the resident but accidentally death resulted. In an interrogation with the Police, Furman had told them that his firearm went off and discharged in killing the resident. Upon further interrogation and
findings, Furman was convicted and sentenced to death by the decision of the United State Supreme Court. The State of Georgia law indicates that the murder was committed during a robbery and cannot be found not guilty of it, but rather will be executed of murder if the court finds him guilty of the crime. Furman appealed, making it known that nature of the conviction of the punishment being a capital punishment lacked a concrete evidence and definition and could vary from state to state. A researched indicate that the in that case the decision of the United State Supreme Court led to a de facto moratorium on capital punishment throughout the United States. Capital punishment is also known as the death penalty. This involves the federal government or state government to execute criminal who are convicted of committing serious crimes.

The Criminal Justice System in the United States has been faced with many issues of racial disparity not to exempt in the case of Furman v.
Georgia. Scott Turow, an author and attorney stated, “Race is the overwhelming element of our Criminal Justice system, no matter on which side you’re on”. Racial discrimination plays a pivotal role in death penalty sentencing. According to a source unknown, “the United States Supreme Court decision ruled on the requirement for a degree of consistency in the application of the death penalty. It effectively imposed a moratorium on the death penalty and struck down state systems that gave juries the ability to impose the death
penalty”.
In the case of three African American, William Henry Furman, Lucious Jackson and Elmer Brach.
Furman arose from the death sentences among them. Findings indicated that the right criteria were not provided to the juries in deciding to vote for the death penalty. However, the Supreme Court ruled out the three death sentences, making it clear that they consisted of cruel and unusual punishment and violated the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. “Justice William O. Douglas concluded that the death penalty was inconsistently and disproportionately applied to those who were economically and socially disadvantaged”. It was held that Furman rights had been violated. The court reasons for stating that Furman rights was violated constituted to the fact that there wasn’t any uniformity across states with regards to how certain people are treated and sentenced to death and later executed. The court also came up with many factors that indicated error, in the sense that many blacks are convicted and sentenced to death more than white people. The aftermath of this case caused many states to re-write their statutes for capital offense and also to change their death penalty as well as some of their criminal procedures to see to it that the death penalty were based on known procedure and punitive deterrent rather than racial disparity and discrimination or any other factor that will not be deemed fair to the society and especially African
Americans.

A similar situation is seen in the case of Patrick Kennedy v. Louisiana where Kennedy was convicted and sentenced to death in Louisiana for rapping his 8-year-old stepdaughter. Meanwhile in the State of Louisiana, the statutes mandate a capital punishment for rape of a child under the age of 12. In the ruling of the case the State Supreme Court attested the statute, rejecting the petitioner’s dependence on Coker v. Georgia, which prevented the use of capital punishment for the rape of an adult woman. Finally, the Supreme Court ruled that the Eighth Amendment forbids Louisiana from imposing the death penalty for the rape of a child where the crime did not result, and was not intended to result, in the victim’s death.

In conclusion, I disagree with the capital punishment given as a decision by juries in certain criminal cases. The conviction and decision of imposing and executing death sentences on some criminals are very cruel and unusual punishment that seems to violate the eight and fourteenth Amendments. I also suggest that before a death penalty is imposed, it should base on factual and commonly criminal procedure law and not on the grounds of race or color.

References
ProCon.org. (2008, October 6). Major Death Penalty Cases in the US Supreme Court. Retrieved from http://deathpenalty.procon.org/view.resource.php? resource ID=001769.

Independence lens. (2007), Race to Execution. Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/racetoexecution/casesofrace.html

The Oyez Project at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law. (2015) in FURMAN v. GEORGIA. Retrieved from <http://www.oyez.org/cases/1970-1979/1971/1971_69_5003/>.

Unknown Author (2001 – 2012). Furman v. Georgia Case Brief. Retrieved from http://www.4lawschool.com/case-briefs/furman-v-georgia.