Description
Competency
In this project, you will demonstrate your mastery of the following competency:
Analyze the impact of court decisions on criminal justice policy and professional practice
Scenario
The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) recently recruited law enforcement professionals from around the world with the intent to resettle them in different communities around the United States in order to diversify local police forces. These professionals have a background in criminal justice practices, but they lack knowledge of specific U.S. criminal justice practices and need instruction in how specific U.S. Supreme Court cases dictate the actions of professionals in police, courts, and corrections. You have been asked to create materials that will be included in a handbook these professionals will use as a part of their onboarding.
Directions
For your materials, you will summarize the decision of the identified court cases and explain the impact they have had on different policies, procedures, or practices in different branches of the criminal justice system.
Analyze what impact these landmark cases have had on police policies, procedures, or practices. In 50–75 words, summarize the decision. Then, in 150–300 words, explain the impact of the case:
Mapp v. Ohio
Analyze what impact these landmark cases have had on court policies, procedures, or practices. In 50–75 words, summarize the decision. Then, in 150–300 words, explain the impact of the case:
Gideon v. Wainwright (See Hemmens et al., p. 343–344)
Analyze what impact these landmark cases have had on corrections policies, procedures, or practices. In 50–75 words, summarize the decision. Then, in 150–300 words, explain the impact of the case:
Furman v. Georgia and Gregg v. Georgia
Analyze what impact these landmark cases have had on policies, procedures, or practices relating to juveniles. Choose one of the cases below, and in 50–75 words, summarize the decision. Then, in 150–300 words, explain the impact of the case:
Roper v. Simmons
In re Gault
What to Submit
To complete this project, you must submit the following:
Handbook training materials using the Project Three Template Word Document.
Unformatted Attachment Preview
CJ 207 Project Three Template
Complete this template by replacing the bracketed text with the relevant information.
Mapp v. Ohio
Summary
[Insert text.]
Impact of the Case
[Insert text.]
Gideon v. Wainwright
Summary
[Insert text.]
Impact of the Case
[Insert text.]
Furman v. Georgia and Gregg v. Georgia
Summary
[Insert text.]
[Insert text.]
Impact of the Case
[Insert text.]
[Insert text.]
Roper v. Simmons OR In re Gault
Summary
[Insert text.]
Impact of the Case
[Insert text.]
CQ Press Books
Illustrated Great Decisions of the Supreme Court
For the most optimal reading experience we recommend using our website.
A free-to-view version of this content is available by clicking on this link, which
includes an easy-to-navigate-and-search-entry, and may also include videos,
embedded datasets, downloadable datasets, interactive questions, audio
content, and downloadable tables and resources.
Author: Tony Mauro
Pub. Date: 2012
Product: CQ Press Books
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4135/9781452240138
Keywords: Fourth Amendment, exclusionary rule, courts, search warrants, Fourth Amendment issues,
search and seizure, police
Disciplines: Supreme Court, American Government & Politics, Politics & International Relations, Law &
Courts
Access Date: March 2, 2024
Publishing Company: CQ Press
City: Washington
Online ISBN: 9781452240138
© 2012 CQ Press All Rights Reserved.
Sage
CQ Press Books
© 2006 by CQ Press, a division of Congressional Quarterly Inc.
Mapp v. Ohio
Decided June 19, 1961 367 U.S. 643
http://laws.findlaw.com/US/367/643.html
Decision
Evidence obtained by searches and seizures in violation of the Constitution is inadmissible in a criminal trial in
a state court. The Court extended the so-called exclusionary rule, previously applicable only to federal criminal prosecutions, to state courts.
Background
In 1914 the Supreme Court ruled in Weeks v. United States that when police use illegal means to obtain evidence against a criminal suspect, that evidence cannot be used against the suspect at trial in a federal court.
Without such a rule, the Weeks Court found, “The protection of the Fourth Amendment declaring [a defendant’s] right to be secure against such searches and seizures is of no value, and, so far as those thus placed
are concerned, might as well be stricken from the Constitution.”
At the federal level, the exclusionary rule was viewed as an effective way to encourage law enforcement officials to abide by the Fourth Amendment in conducting searches and seizures. If police abuses resulted in
the evidence being tossed out at trial, the theory went, then police would think twice about conducting illegal
searches. As Judge Benjamin Cardozo put it in a New York case, “The criminal is to go free because the
constable has blundered.”
But in a series of decisions since Weeks, the Court had resisted efforts to extend the rule to state courts,
which is, after all, where most people encounter the legal system. The Court argued that the Bill of Rights
governed only federal action. As recently as 1949, the Court in Wolf v. Colorado had found that state courts
did not have to exclude illegally obtained evidence from trials, even though the Fourth Amendment’s protection against illegal searches applied to local police as well as to federal agents. Gradually, however, the Court
Page 2 of 7
Illustrated Great Decisions of the Supreme Court
Sage
CQ Press Books
© 2006 by CQ Press, a division of Congressional Quarterly Inc.
began to “incorporate” the states into protections of other parts of the Bill of Rights such as the First Amendment, by way of the Fourteenth Amendment, which did affect state action.
Indeed, the case that came to the Court appeared to involve a First Amendment issue, not evidence. It concerned a 1957 search by Cleveland police of the apartment of Dollree Mapp, suspected of involvement in
an illegal gambling operation. She resisted and asked to see a search warrant. When police waved a piece
of paper in front of her, she snatched it and put it down the front of her blouse. Police fought to get it back,
and it is not entirely clear whether it was in fact a valid search warrant. None was produced at the trial. Police proceeded to search the apartment in what the Supreme Court characterized as a “highhanded manner.”
They found no evidence of gambling, but did find some allegedly obscene literature and photographs in a
locked suitcase. Mapp claimed the suitcase belonged to a former boarder, but she was convicted of possessing pornography and sentenced to prison for up to seven years. On appeal, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled
that under Ohio law the results of the search were admissible, even though the search was unlawful. Mapp’s
conviction was upheld.
When the case came to the Supreme Court, Mapp’s lawyers argued that the Ohio obscenity law was unconstitutionally vague. An amicus (friend of the court) brief by the American Civil Liberties Union argued that the
evidence should be excluded because it was illegally obtained, but that issue was barely mentioned in oral
arguments.
As recounted in a biography of Earl Warren by Ed Cray, a majority of the justices agreed in private conference
to overturn Mapp’s conviction on First Amendment grounds. Chief Justice Warren and Justices Douglas and
Brennan indicated they also wanted to reverse the conviction on Fourth Amendment grounds, but no other
justices supported them, and the idea was dropped. Later Justice Clark suggested that he too was ready to
reverse on that basis as well. Justice Black was persuaded to join them, and Clark was assigned to write the
opinion. Justice Frankfurter, who had written the Court’s opinion in Wolf, was furious when he saw Clark’s
draft opinion. He argued that the Fourth Amendment issue had not been fully argued and should not be ruled
on. But he did not prevail.
Vote
5–4, with Justice Tom C. Clark writing for the majority. Joining in the majority were Chief Justice Earl Warren
Page 3 of 7
Illustrated Great Decisions of the Supreme Court
Sage
CQ Press Books
© 2006 by CQ Press, a division of Congressional Quarterly Inc.
and Justices William O. Douglas, William J. Brennan Jr., and Hugo L. Black. Dissenting were Justices John
M. Harlan, Felix Frankfurter, Charles E. Whittaker, and Potter Stewart.
Highlights
Justice Clark’s main argument was that if the exclusionary rule was an effective constitutional rule at the federal level, it would be illogical, given the Fourteenth Amendment, not to extend the rule to state-sponsored
searches as well. “Presently, a federal prosecutor may make no use of evidence illegally seized, but a State’s
attorney across the street may, although he supposedly is operating under the enforceable prohibitions of the
same Amendment,” Clark wrote.
Page 4 of 7
Illustrated Great Decisions of the Supreme Court
Sage
CQ Press Books
© 2006 by CQ Press, a division of Congressional Quarterly Inc.
Dollree Mapp was arrested for possession of obscene materials seized during an illegal
search. In an amicus curiae brief filed in Mapp v. Ohio (1961), the American Civil Liberties
Union raised the Fourth Amendment issue on which her case was decided. The Court ruled
that illegally obtained evidence could not be used against the accused at trial.
Source: The Granger Collection, New York.
Recalling Cardozo’s statement, Clark wrote, “The criminal goes free, if he must, but it is the law that sets him
free. Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws, or worse, its
disregard of the charter of its own existence.”
Justice Black reached the same conclusion in his concurring opinion, but through the Fourth and Fifth Amendments in tandem, not the Fourteenth.
Page 5 of 7
Illustrated Great Decisions of the Supreme Court
Sage
CQ Press Books
© 2006 by CQ Press, a division of Congressional Quarterly Inc.
Justice Harlan’s dissent clung to the old arguments against applying the Bill of Rights to actions by the states
and accused the majority of abandoning “judicial restraint.” The majority’s view, Harlan said, “disfigures the
boundaries” between the federal and state governments.
Excerpts
From Justice Clark’s majority opinion: “Having once recognized that the right to privacy embodied in the
Fourth Amendment is enforceable against the States, and that the right to be secure against rude invasions
of privacy by state officers is, therefore, constitutional in origin, we can no longer permit that right to remain an
empty promise. Because it is enforceable in the same manner and to like effect as other basic rights secured
by the Due Process Clause, we can no longer permit it to be revocable at the whim of any police officer who,
in the name of law enforcement itself, chooses to suspend its enjoyment. Our decision, founded on reason
and truth, gives to the individual no more than that which the Constitution guarantees him, to the police officer no less than that to which honest law enforcement is entitled, and, to the Courts, that judicial integrity so
necessary in the true administration of justice.”
Impact
Justice Clark’s offhand remark in an elevator transformed a minor First Amendment case into one of the Warren Court’s most significant criminal law decisions. Along with Gideon v. Wainwright and Miranda v. Arizona,
Mapp transformed police practices nationwide. (See Gideon v. Wainwright and Miranda v. Arizona.) Later
Chief Justice Warren said of Mapp, “It’s hard to say it’s a case. It’s like a huge cloud from which a lot of things
are raining.”
Even though the idea of exclusionary rule originated in the Weeks case, Mapp is far better known and more
controversial because it applied the rule to a far broader range of cases. To critics, it exemplified the Warren
Court’s liberal concern for the rights of defendants as opposed to the needs of law enforcement. Critics and
defenders disagree over the impact of Mapp on prosecutions, but in 1983 one study indicated that fewer than
3 percent of felony prosecutions were spoiled by improper searches that led to the exclusion of evidence.
As the Court pendulum swung back toward more conservative decisions, Mapp came under steady attack.
Page 6 of 7
Illustrated Great Decisions of the Supreme Court
Sage
CQ Press Books
© 2006 by CQ Press, a division of Congressional Quarterly Inc.
Warren Burger, named by President Richard Nixon to succeed Chief Justice Warren, was critical of Mapp, and
during the 1970s and 1980s the Court weakened it. In a pair of decisions in 1984, for example, the Court said
illegally obtained evidence could be admitted at trial if it could be shown that police would have “inevitably”
discovered it without the illegal search, or that police were acting in good faith based on a defective search
warrant.
As for Dollree Mapp, she moved to New York where she was convicted in 1974 on charges of selling narcotics. She was sentenced to twenty years to life in prison.
• Fourth Amendment
• exclusionary rule
• courts
• search warrants
• Fourth Amendment issues
• search and seizure
• police
https://doi.org/10.4135/9781452240138
Page 7 of 7
Illustrated Great Decisions of the Supreme Court
CQ Press Books
Illustrated Great Decisions of the Supreme Court
For the most optimal reading experience we recommend using our website.
A free-to-view version of this content is available by clicking on this link, which
includes an easy-to-navigate-and-search-entry, and may also include videos,
embedded datasets, downloadable datasets, interactive questions, audio
content, and downloadable tables and resources.
Author: Tony Mauro
Pub. Date: 2012
Product: CQ Press Books
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4135/9781452240138
Keywords: defendants, Sixth Amendment, lawyers, courts, petitions, Supreme Court, trials
Disciplines: Supreme Court, American Government & Politics, Politics & International Relations, Law &
Courts
Access Date: March 2, 2024
Publishing Company: CQ Press
City: Washington
Online ISBN: 9781452240138
© 2012 CQ Press All Rights Reserved.
Sage
CQ Press Books
© 2006 by CQ Press, a division of Congressional Quarterly Inc.
Gideon v. Wainwright
Decided March 18, 1963
372 U.S. 335
http://laws.findlaw.com/US/372/335.html
Decision
A defendant charged with a crime under state law must be provided with an attorney if he is unable to afford
one. Having the assistance of a lawyer is so fundamental to the Sixth Amendment right of a fair trial that
states can be required to provide lawyers to defendants.
Background
The words of the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution seem clear enough: “In all criminal prosecutions,
the accused shall enjoy the right … to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.” No one disputes the
right to an attorney, but, historically, it has been the responsibility of the accused to secure a lawyer and pay
for the services. The controversy has centered on the rights of those who cannot afford legal assistance.
The historical evidence suggests that the Framers of the Constitution intended to counteract the British common law rule that barred defense lawyers in felony cases. But as the complexity of the law and the cost of
hiring lawyers increased, many lawyers—including Supreme Court justices—began to consider the failure to
provide counsel in a range of cases to be a fundamental injustice to defendants.
In the 1932 case Powell v. Alabama, the Court ruled that at least in cases where the defendant faced the
death penalty, the Fourteenth Amendment (not the Sixth Amendment) required that states provide lawyers
to defendants. “Even the intelligent and educated layman has small and sometimes no skill in the science of
law,” the Court said. (See Powell v. Alabama.) Six years later, the Court in Johnson v. Zerbst said the Sixth
Amendment required appointment of counsel in all federal criminal trials.
Page 2 of 11
Illustrated Great Decisions of the Supreme Court
Sage
CQ Press Books
© 2006 by CQ Press, a division of Congressional Quarterly Inc.
But in Betts v. Brady (1942), the Court said the rule did not have to be extended to state court defendants
in non–death penalty cases, except in “special circumstances.” The Court was sharply criticized for the Betts
decision and eventually seemed to take the criticism to heart. From 1950 on, the Court never found a case
in which counsel should not have been appointed. The Betts standard was defined to protect mentally retarded or illiterate defendants and to provide relief in cases in which there was misconduct by the prosecutor or
judge.
By the time Clarence Earl Gideon’s case came to the Court, the issue seemed to many legal scholars to be
ripe for another look. In Gideon’s Trumpet, his classic 1964 book on the case, Anthony Lewis says of the right
to counsel, “Few legal problems could have been so continuously on the justices’ minds and consciences.”
It is perhaps ironic that this case made it to the Supreme Court based on an erroneous assumption. Gideon,
a fifty-oneyear-old drifter, was about to be tried on a petty larceny charge in Florida. He had been charged
with breaking into the Bay Harbor Poolroom in Panama City, Florida, in June 1961. According to police, he
took some beer and wine, as well as coins from the juke box and cigarette machine. At the beginning of his
trial, Gideon stood and asked the judge to appoint a lawyer to represent him, saying flatly, “The United States
Supreme Court says I am entitled to be represented by counsel.”
Gideon was wrong at the time, and the judge told him so. Only in cases where a defendant faces the death
penalty, the judge said, is an indigent defendant entitled to have the state pay for a lawyer to represent him.
Because the offense was minor, Gideon’s request was denied.
At trial, Gideon conducted his own defense more ably than many nonlawyers might have done. He questioned
the government witness and called eight witnesses of his own. But it is clear from the trial transcript that he
missed several opportunities to help his case that even a novice lawyer would have exploited. For example,
he was not told he could question potential jurors about possible biases, so he did not; nor did he establish
any alibi to explain his whereabouts that night. The jury found him guilty and he was sentenced to the maximum prison term of five years.
Gideon, still acting as his own lawyer, appealed his imprisonment to the Florida Supreme Court, which denied
his plea. The stage was thus set for his appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Gideon wrote the petition in pencil,
on prison-sanctioned stationery. It was ungrammatical in places, but powerful as well. “When at the time of
the petitioners trial he ask the lower court for the aid of counsel, the court refused this aid,” Gideon wrote.
Repeating his mistaken notion of the Supreme Court’s precedents, he added, “Petitioner told the court that
Page 3 of 11
Illustrated Great Decisions of the Supreme Court
Sage
CQ Press Books
© 2006 by CQ Press, a division of Congressional Quarterly Inc.
this Court made decision to the effect that all citizens tried for a felony crime should have aid of counsel. The
lower court ignored this plea.”
Gideon’s petition was filed in forma pauperis (Latin for “in the manner of a pauper”), which means that it was
accepted without the usual filing fees and without multiple copies. Such petitions often receive only cursory attention from the justices and their law clerks, but it appears that the Court was looking for a case like
Gideon’s, in which the defendant was not mentally incompetent, but was still tried unfairly because of lack of
counsel. “This may be it!” Chief Justice Warren’s law clerk wrote at the bottom of his summary of the Gideon
petition, according to Ed Cray’s 1997 Warren biography. When the Court agreed to hear the case, the Court
signaled its importance by asking the parties to argue whether Betts v. Brady should be overturned.
Although Gideon was able to argue his own case in lower courts, the Supreme Court operates differently:
only lawyers can argue before the Court. Washington, D.C., attorney Abe Fortas, later a justice himself, was
selected to argue on Gideon’s behalf. Justice William O. Douglas later said Fortas’s advocacy in the Gideon
case was “probably the best single legal argument” he had ever heard. Bruce Jacob, an inexperienced assistant Florida attorney general, represented Louie Wainwright, the head of Florida’s prisons.
Page 4 of 11
Illustrated Great Decisions of the Supreme Court
Sage
CQ Press Books
© 2006 by CQ Press, a division of Congressional Quarterly Inc.
Clarence Earl Gideon, a mechanic sentenced to prison for breaking and entering, thought
he should have had the assistance of a lawyer at his trial. Using the prison library, Gideon
taught himself enough about the law to petition the Supreme Court to review his conviction.
In Gideon v. Wainwright (1963), a unanimous Court declared that anyone accused of a crime
must be guaranteed the right to an attorney, regardless of whether he or she can afford one.
Source: AP/Wide World Photos.
Vote
9–0, with Justice Hugo L. Black delivering the opinion for Chief Justice Earl Warren and Justices William O.
Douglas, Tom C. Clark, John M. Harlan, William J. Brennan Jr., Potter Stewart, Byron R. White, and Arthur J.
Page 5 of 11
Illustrated Great Decisions of the Supreme Court
Sage
CQ Press Books
© 2006 by CQ Press, a division of Congressional Quarterly Inc.
Goldberg.
Highlights
Justice Black, who had been the chief dissenter in Betts v. Brady twenty years earlier, wrote the majority opinion in Gideon, which overturned Betts. In part to make the decision unanimous, the decision was relatively
brief and limited. He made much of the Court’s earlier precedents, which he implied were more valid than
Betts.
Even the Betts decision was right in one respect, Black added. “We accept Betts v. Brady’s assumption, based
as it was on our prior cases, that a provision of the Bill of Rights which is ‘fundamental and essential to a
fair trial’ is made obligatory upon the States by the Fourteenth Amendment. We think the Court in Betts was
wrong, however, in concluding that the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of counsel is not one of these fundamental rights.”
In this way, the Court “incorporated” Sixth Amendment guarantees to bind the states as well as the federal
government, through the due process guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court did not define the
outer limits of its holding. It noted that twenty-two states had urged the Court to overturn Betts, while only two
states joined Florida in asking that it be retained.
Excerpts
From Justice Hugo L. Black’s majority opinion: “[R]eason and reflection require us to recognize that in our
adversary system of criminal justice, any person haled into court, who is too poor to hire a lawyer, cannot be
assured a fair trial unless counsel is provided for him. This seems to us to be an obvious truth. Governments,
both state and federal, quite properly spend vast sums of money to establish machinery to try defendants accused of crime. Lawyers to prosecute are everywhere deemed essential to protect the public’s interest in an
orderly society. Similarly, there are few defendants charged with crime, few indeed, who fail to hire the best
lawyers they can get to prepare and present their defenses. That government hires lawyers to prosecute and
defendants who have the money hire lawyers to defend are the strongest indications of the widespread belief
that lawyers in criminal courts are necessities, not luxuries. The right of one charged with crime to counsel
Page 6 of 11
Illustrated Great Decisions of the Supreme Court
Sage
CQ Press Books
© 2006 by CQ Press, a division of Congressional Quarterly Inc.
may not be deemed fundamental and essential to fair trials in some countries, but it is in ours.”
Page 7 of 11
Illustrated Great Decisions of the Supreme Court
Sage
CQ Press Books
© 2006 by CQ Press, a division of Congressional Quarterly Inc.
Clarence Earl Gideon handwrote his petition to the Supreme Court seeking a review of his
conviction. Gideon filed an in forma pauperis petition that exempted him from paying filing
fees and from certain other procedural regulations.
Page 8 of 11
Illustrated Great Decisions of the Supreme Court
Sage
CQ Press Books
© 2006 by CQ Press, a division of Congressional Quarterly Inc.
Source: National Archives.Source: National Archives.
Page 9 of 11
Illustrated Great Decisions of the Supreme Court
Sage
CQ Press Books
© 2006 by CQ Press, a division of Congressional Quarterly Inc.
Impact
The Gideon decision has become one of the Court’s best known rulings. It made its way into popular culture
through Anthony Lewis’s book and a subsequent movie in which actor Henry Fonda portrayed Gideon. The
Gideon ruling, along with Miranda v. Arizona, symbolized the Warren Court’s expansive view of constitutional
protections for criminal defendants (see Miranda v. Arizona).
Gideon also represented the power of a determined individual to change settled notions about the law. Robert
F. Kennedy observed that if Gideon had not petitioned the Supreme Court when he did, “the vast machinery
of American law would have gone on functioning undisturbed. But Gideon did write that letter, the Court did
look into his case … and the whole course of American legal history has been changed.”
Some have said that the practical impact of the Gideon ruling may have been more limited than that. In spite
of Betts v. Brady, most states by the time of Gideon were already providing lawyers to indigent defendants,
even in non–death penalty cases. But Gideon certainly helped to firmly establish publicly funded legal aid and
public defender offices throughout the nation.
At first the Gideon ruling was interpreted mainly to guarantee lawyers for defendants accused of felonies. But
in 1972 the Court expanded the ruling to cover misdemeanor defendants as well. Gideon also began a line
of cases in which the Court said that at least in a limited way, the Sixth Amendment also guaranteed “the
effective assistance of counsel,” meaning that if a lawyer’s mistakes seriously affected the trial’s outcome, a
conviction could be overturned. In many appeals of death sentences, death row inmates often include claims
that their lawyers did not give them effective assistance. The Supreme Court has responded to some of these
claims, especially in death penalty cases. Individual justices have expressed concern about the quality of representation for death row inmates, and the American Bar Association has recruited quality attorneys to take
on the often time-consuming and thankless task of aiding inmates on appeal. In the 2005 case Rompilla v.
Beard, the Court overturned the death sentence of Ronald Rompilla because his attorneys failed to look up
files relating to Rompilla’s prior crimes, leaving them unable to rebut the prosecutor’s statements about his
past.
As for Gideon himself, the decision meant a new trial on the larceny charges. With the assistance of a local
lawyer, who was able to poke holes in the prosecution’s case, Gideon was found not guilty in August 1963.
Page 10 of 11
Illustrated Great Decisions of the Supreme Court
Sage
CQ Press Books
© 2006 by CQ Press, a division of Congressional Quarterly Inc.
• defendants
• Sixth Amendment
• lawyers
• courts
• petitions
• Supreme Court
• trials
https://doi.org/10.4135/9781452240138
Page 11 of 11
Illustrated Great Decisions of the Supreme Court
CQ Press Books
Illustrated Great Decisions of the Supreme Court
For the most optimal reading experience we recommend using our website.
A free-to-view version of this content is available by clicking on this link, which
includes an easy-to-navigate-and-search-entry, and may also include videos,
embedded datasets, downloadable datasets, interactive questions, audio
content, and downloadable tables and resources.
Author: Tony Mauro
Pub. Date: 2012
Product: CQ Press Books
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4135/9781452240138
Keywords: capital punishment, punishment, Eighth Amendment, death, courts, cruel and unusual
punishment, defendants
Disciplines: Supreme Court, American Government & Politics, Politics & International Relations, Law &
Courts
Access Date: March 2, 2024
Publishing Company: CQ Press
City: Washington
Online ISBN: 9781452240138
© 2012 CQ Press All Rights Reserved.
Sage
CQ Press Books
© 2006 by CQ Press, a division of Congressional Quarterly Inc.
Furman v. Georgia
Decided June 29, 1972
408 U.S. 238
http://laws.findlaw.com/US/408/238.html
Decision
Capital punishment, as it is imposed and carried out, violates the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution,
which prohibits “cruel and unusual” punishments.
Background
The death penalty has been part of the U.S. justice system since the earliest days. The First Congress in
1790 made murder, forgery, robbery, and rape punishable by death. The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution presumed the death penalty’s existence by guaranteeing due process of law before a criminal defendant
could be deprived “of life or limb.”
But that history has not prevented capital punishment from being a constitutional flashpoint in the Supreme
Court’s history. The primary reason is the Eighth Amendment, which says that “cruel and unusual punishments” shall not be inflicted. Unlike other commands of the Constitution, these words have seemed unusually
subjective, hard to define without reference to shifting public sentiment. Flogging may have seemed neither
cruel nor unusual in colonial days, but now most would agree that it is both, as well as anachronistic.
After World War II other nations began abolishing the death penalty. In the United States the civil rights movement also created abolitionist pressure because death sentences were meted out disproportionately to black
defendants. One 1966 study found that of 119 convicted rapists in the South who were executed after World
War II, 110 were black.
The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) launched
Page 2 of 11
Illustrated Great Decisions of the Supreme Court
Sage
CQ Press Books
© 2006 by CQ Press, a division of Congressional Quarterly Inc.
a campaign to challenge death sentences in all of the forty-two jurisdictions that had death penalty laws. The
aim was to slow down executions to the point of a virtual moratorium. In 1968 the goal was reached: it was
the first year in the nation’s history in which no one was executed.
That was also the year in which the Supreme Court came close to striking down a death penalty law for the
first time. In Maxwell v. Bishop, six of the nine justices voted to reject Alabama’s death penalty law because
it did not call for separate consideration of the death penalty after a finding of guilt. In other words, the same
jury that found a defendant guilty had wide leeway to simultaneously sentence the defendant to death. Many
legal experts had argued the finding of guilt and the sentencing should be separate, partly to enable a defendant to testify in favor of a lower sentence without exposing himself or herself to questioning about guilt.
A 6–3 vote in that case would have dramatically weakened death penalty laws nationwide. But it never came
to pass. According to The Brethren by Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong, Justice Douglas wrote an overly
broad ruling, which scared off a justice, making it a 5–4 vote. Justice Abe Fortas then resigned, turning it into
a 4–4 tie. By the time the case was reargued, two Nixon appointees had joined the Court, and the tide shifted
in favor of the death penalty.
But public sentiment seemed to be turning the other way. Former attorney general Ramsey Clark came out
against the death penalty, declaring, “It is the poor, the sick, the ignorant, the powerless, and the hated who
are executed.”
The continuing tide of death penalty appeals made it inevitable that the Court would take up the issue again.
In June 1971 the Court agreed to consider two Georgia cases and one from Texas that challenged the constitutionality of the death penalty.
They became known collectively as Furman v. Georgia, taking the name of the case of William Furman, a
twenty-six- year-old black man convicted of murdering a white woman while he was burglarizing her house.
He claimed it was an accidental shooting, but because it occurred during a felony, Furman was sentenced to
the electric chair. The other two cases involved black defendants sentenced to death for raping white women.
Although the cases posed many of the issues of racial bias and arbitrariness upon which death penalty opponents were pinning their hopes, chances of defeating the death penalty were widely viewed as slim.
Page 3 of 11
Illustrated Great Decisions of the Supreme Court
Sage
CQ Press Books
© 2006 by CQ Press, a division of Congressional Quarterly Inc.
Vote
5–4, with an unsigned (per curiam) opinion. In the majority were Justices William O. Douglas, William J. Brennan Jr., Potter Stewart, Byron R. White, and Thurgood Marshall. Dissenting were Chief Justice Warren E.
Burger and Justices Harry A. Blackmun, Lewis F. Powell Jr., and William Rehnquist.
Highlights
The basic holding of the Court, declaring capital punishment unconstitutional, is contained in a one-paragraph
unsigned opinion of the Court. All nine justices wrote separately to express their views, making it clear that
this case caused considenable strife within the Court. According to The Brethren, Justice Stewart later told
friends he had lost sleep over the case, sobered by the knowledge that the decision would affect the lives of
more than 700 people on death row.
Georgia’s electric chair. After being sentenced to the electric chair, William Furman, a twenty-six-yearold black man convicted of murdering a white woman, challenged the constitutionality of the death
penalty. In Furman v. Georgia (1972), the justices ruled the imposition and carrying out of capital punishment a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on “cruel and unusual” punishment.
Page 4 of 11
Illustrated Great Decisions of the Supreme Court
Sage
CQ Press Books
© 2006 by CQ Press, a division of Congressional Quarterly Inc.
Source: Reuters.
The justices in the majority had the challenging task of justifying a constitutional end to capital punishment
when it was acknowledged in the Constitution. And the fact that a vast majority of states had not overturned
the death penalty made it hard to argue that society viewed it as cruel and unusual.
On the first problem, Justice Brennan’s separate opinion conceded the point that the Constitution contemplated capital punishment. “We can thus infer that the Framers recognized the existence of what was then
a common punishment. We cannot, however, make the further inference that they intended to exempt t
