Talk Elections

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furman_v._Georgia

http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0408_0238_ZS.html

"Does 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?"

403 U.S. 952 (1971). The Court holds that the imposition [p240] 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.

So ordered.

MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS, MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN, MR. JUSTICE STEWART, MR. JUSTICE WHITE, and MR. JUSTICE MARSHALL have filed separate opinions in support of the judgments. THE CHIEF JUSTICE, MR. JUSTICE BLACKMUN, MR. JUSTICE POWELL, and MR. JUSTICE REHNQUIST have filed separate dissenting opinions.

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This ruling caused the effective suspension of the death penalty until better consistency between the states could be imposed.

Unsound. The Constitution explicitly acknowledges capital punishment in no fewer than four cases:

- "No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury." (Fifth Amendment)

- "No person shall ... be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb." (Fifth Amendment)

- "No person shall ... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." (Fifth Amendment)

- "No State shall ... deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." (Fourteenth Amendment)

The Eighth Amendment should be interpreted consistently with the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. Since the Constitution explicitly recognizes the validity of capital punishment in not one but four places, capital punishment cannot be considered cruel or unusual. Imposing a national moratorium on the death penalty was nothing but judicial activism.

Another activist court ruling.  It was a very bad period for the Supreme Court.

Another ruling which demonstrates how much of an oxymoron their title of 'Justice' is. One of the most glaring  and obvious acts of judicial activism ever.

Generally sound.  Brennan's and Marshall's concurrences (they were the only two who found the death penalty totally unconstitutinal) were unsound.  But the basic finding that the inequitible application of the death penalty constitutes "unusual punishment" is sound.

Woodson v. North Carolina was unsound, but not Furman v. Georgia.

At most, the Justices could have found that the death penalty was inequitably applied in the case immediately before them. They had no authority to impose a national moratorium on the death penalty, merely because the defendants before them at the time may have been treated unfairly.

Couldn't it be argued that the death penalty is 'depriving life'?

It is depriving life, without a doubt. You seem to be ignoring the 'without due process' part.

That's true.  All those two lines really do is ban lynching.

Well, a state can't really 'lynch' someone. Anything authorized by law is due process of law.

There was ample evidence of inherent problems in sentencing regimes that were being used, especially in the Southern States. If a death penalty statute or its general application is violating equal protection, the statute cannot be allowed to stand, and thus must be struck down.

This has the obvious effect of creating a "moratorium" on the death penalty. It perhaps should not have created a national moratorium in the way that it did, but rather said that Georgia's regime was and laid out a basic framework for the Circuits to follow to decide whether such equal protection problems existed in the other States, but the underlying judgement that some sentencing schemes, and specifically the one of Georgia, were violating equal protection was sound.

If I recall correctly, the Court's decision was based on the Eighth Amendment rather than the equal protection clause.

I believe that the Supreme Court did not find any evidence of racial bias against the defendant. Rather, it considered general statistics relating to the application of capital punishment in other cases. Such an approach is wholly inappropriate, in my opinion.

They struck down the Death Penalty laws in current existence. They didn't rule the Death Penalty as such unconstitutional, so your argument in your first post really goes nowhere, Emsworth. (Also, your first example doesn't even deal with the death penalty, and your second one also declares mutilation constitutional.)

How does the first example fail to deal with the death penalty? It refers to "capital" crimes.

As to the second example, yes, of course mutilation is constitutional.

Not to punishment.

Oh, and I don't think amputation of arms, boring through the tongue, etc, were still considered usual at the time. The 18th century was really quite enlightened in judicial practice - though not ancient, unreformed bodies of law - much better than the 19th in many but not all respects.

A capital crime is a crime that can be punished by death. What else could it mean?

I've checked, and that indeed is the only meaning it has in English (apart from stupid puns). In German, the definition of Kapitalverbrechen is given as, any major crime, or any crime previously punishable by death ... examples stated being murder, rape, and conspiracy. which is what I started out from. Sorry!

Wait a second.  How exactly is mutilation constitutional?  That's about as cruel and unusual as you're likely to find.

The Fifth Amendment's double jeopardy clause explicitly foresees cutting off someone's limbs: "No person shall ... be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb." If one part of the Bill of Rights specifically acknowledges it, then another part of the Bill of Rights does not prohibit it.

Only torturous punishments should be considered "cruel and unusual."

This of course is assuming that a 1789 member of the constitutional convention was aware of the historical meaning of the phrase. Given that boring through the tongue, amputation of limbs etc had gone out of use in the Americas quite a while before, and the phrase "life and limb" sounds so cool, this may be too large an assumption actually.

One of the worst decisions ever handed down. All concurring justices deserved the death penalty.

Another fine example of maturity by AuH20 (rolls eyes)

Actually, the immaturity was on the part of those justices.

Murder is cruel. Using taxpayers money to do it is unusual :P

Uh, you are an idiot. Go figure out what 'murder' means and maybe then I'll point you to the four parts of the Constitution that explicitly contemplate the usage of the death penalty.

Murder has two relevant definitions, according to the dictionary at my desk:

1. "the premeditated killing of one human being by another"
2. "to put an end to; destroy"

point away

Your dictionary is trash. Murder is the unlawful killing of one human by another, especially with premeditated malice.

This definition is not legally valid. For example, under this definition, killing someone else in self-defense is "murder."

but only if you have premeditated your self-defense

Under the law, all killing is 'homicide.'

However, only certain types of killings are 'murder.'  Homicide can be justified under the law.

I am a death penalty supporter.  Putting a person to death whom you are sure has committed a heinous crime is not murder, it is justifiable homicide, under our laws and constititution.  I believe it should continue.

"Premeditation" is the act of deciding to do something before doing it. If someone is about to kill you, but then you decide to kill him in self-defense, then the killing is "premeditated."

Thus, according to your dictionary's definition, killing someone in self-defense is murder.

This is because the legal term, premeditated, has been rendered meaningless by a succession of hanging judges.
To medieval and early modern observers, most current "murders" would not be murders but second-degree manslaughters, precisely because they're not actually premeditated - they weren't planned out in detail.
Of course it hardly mattered back then because manslaughter was a capital crime too - just that the punishment was beheading, followed by a Christian burial, rather than some horrid torture-to-death followed by a shallow unmarked grave somewhere on the edge of town. Murder convictions were extremely rare.

Perhaps homicide was the term I was looking for. I don't see why we all must fuss over the proper terms. It is the conveyed message that truly matters.

The Constitution explicitly contemplates the usage of the death penalty three times in the Fifth Amendment, and once in the Fourteenth.

Yes, Em has already pointed that out.

I thought that was a different thread.

Furman wasn't about the death penalty per se, only about an existing arbitrary death penalty laws. Four years later, Gregg decision found the new ones constitutional.