Furman v. Georgia

The Court struck down existing death penalty statutes as arbitrarily and capriciously applied, halting all executions.

Overview

Three consolidated cases produced five separate majority opinions. Justices Stewart and White found the penalty cruel and unusual as actually administered, so rarely and discriminatorily applied that it functioned like being struck by lightning. Justices Douglas, Marshall, and Brennan condemned the penalty outright. The effect was to invalidate every death statute in the country, suspending capital punishment nationwide and commuting over six hundred death sentences. States quickly rewrote their laws, and the Court upheld the new guided-discretion statutes in Gregg four years later. Furman remains the high-water mark of constitutional regulation of capital punishment.