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“William Henry Furman, a twenty-six-year-old black man with a sixth grade education, was not what most people called a “bad” man,” (Herda 7). Furman was just laid off of his job and was struggling to find work. But there was none. Every job did not pay enough, or was a short term job. Eventually, depressed, hungry, and broke, Furman turned to breaking and entering and to petty thievery by means of survival. Furman was caught a few times and was given a light sentence. He was also examined by a psychiatrist and was determined to be mentally impaired, but not enough to go to a mental institution. But on August 11, 1967, Furman went to rob the house of twenty-nine-year-old William Joseph Micke, Jr. with his wife and five young children. When searching through the house, Furman made too much noise, which alerted Micke. Furman heard Micke walking down the stairs and pulled out his gun that he used for scaring people away. But Micke kept walking downwards. Not wanting to be caught, Furman tried to run away and tripped over an exposed cord. His gun discharged. The bullet ricocheted to the back door. On the other side, a body fell to the floor. William Joseph Micke Jr. was dead. “The police responded to the call quickly and, within minutes, they had apprehended Furman just down the street from the scene of the crime. The murders weapon was still in his pocket,” (Herda 9). Furman tried to plead guilty by insanity and the psychiatrists described him as legally insane. But then, several days later one of the psychiatrists revised their medical opinion. Because he was not insane, the case would go on. The state of Georgia charged him with murder and issued the death penalty. This was because Georgia state law stated that any form of murder is... ... middle of paper ... ...d some publicity, and several lawyers were now handling his appeal,” (Furman v. Georgia). The first step was the Georgia Supreme Court. The court unanimously voted to uphold the lower court’s decision of the death penalty. The Chief Justice, W. H. Duckworth, gave Furman time to petition to the US Supreme Court before the execution was finalized. The Supreme Court approved. And thus, the official Furman v. Georgia case had begun. “I admit going to these folks' home and they did caught me in there and I was coming back out, backing up and there was a wire down there on the floor. I was coming out backwards and fell back and I didn't intend to kill nobody . . . The gun went off and I didn't know nothing about no murder until they arrested me, and when the gun went off I was down on the floor and I got up and ran. That's all to it,” (Official Supreme Court Transcript).
.... Madison was applied to this decision because the actions committed were unconstitutional. According to the Supreme Court the 8th Amendment was broken because the District Court of Appeal was giving a cruel and unusual punishment to Graham. The 8th amendment claus does not allow a juvenile offender to be sentenced to life in jail without a parole for a non-homicidal crime. Therefore Terrance could not fall through with this punishment.
The case Worcester v. Georgia (1832) was a basis for the discussion of the issue of states' rights versus the federal government as played out in the administration of President Andrew Jackson and its battle with the Supreme Court. In addition to the constitutional issues involved, the momentum of the westward movement and popular support for Indian resettlement pitted white man against Indian. All of these factors came together in the Worcester case, which alarmed the independence of the Cherokee Nation, but which was not enforced. This examines the legal issues and tragic consequences of Indian resettlement.
Furman, a black, killed a householder while seeking to enter the home at night. Furman shot the deceased through a closed door. He was 26 years old and had finished the sixth grade in school. Pending trial, he was committed to the Georgia Central State Hospital for a psychiatric examination on his plea of insanity tendered by court appointed counsel. The superintendent reported that a unanimous staff diagnostic conference had concluded "that this patient should retain his present diagnosis of Mental Deficiency, Mild to Moderate, with Psychotic Episodes associated with Convulsive Disorder." The physicians agreed that "at present the patient is not psychotic, but he is not capable of cooperating with his counsel in the preparation of his defense"; and the staff believed "that he is in need of further psychiatric hospitalization and treatment."
Outside the courthouse in Newton, Georgia, in the early hours of January 30, 1943, Robert “Bobby” Hall was beaten unconscious by M. Claude Screws, Frank Edward Jones, and Jim Bob Kelley[1] while in their custody for the alleged theft of a tire;[2] Screws, Jones and Kelley were, respectively, Baker county sheriff, night policeman, and a civilian deputized specifically for the arrest.[3] Without ever recovering consciousness, Hall died as a result of a fractured skull shortly after his arrival at an Albany hospital that morning.[4] The NAACP and FBI investigated Hall’s death in the following months and federal charges were brought against Screws, Jones, and Kelley for violation of Section 20 of the Federal Criminal Code, which stipulates that no person may “under color of any law … willfully” deprive a person of “any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution and laws of the United States.”[5] After being found guilty in the lower courts, the defendants brought their case to the Supreme Court on appeal, alleging that they had violated a state rather than federal law and, consequently, could not be held liable under Section 20. The Supreme Court’s central concern in Screws et al. v. United States was to interpret the intent and breadth of Section 20 in order to judge its constitutionality; in doing so, the Court struggled to reach a consensus regarding the definition of state action and the indefinite nature of the rights protected by the statute. Such consensus proved difficult, indeed, as the case was narrowly decided and divided the Court along deep constitutional lines; while a majority of the Court advocated reversal of the lower co...
Since Furman v. Georgia, the Supreme Court struck down Georgia’s death penalty due to infrequencies and the randomness of the imposition of the death penalty. (Mandery, 2012, p.135). The two justices who switched sides between the Furman case and the Gregg case, both expressed mayor concern in Furman with the infrequency and randomness with which juries imposed the death penalty. “For Justice Potter Stewart, the arbitrariness was a matter of fairness. For Justice Byron White, the concern was utilitarian a randomly and infrequently imposed death penalty could not possibly deter” (Mandery, 2012, p.135), they both expressed similar concerns about the apparent arbitrariness with which death sentences were imposed under the existing law, each found the unpredictability of the original statute fatal, it seems only fair to ask whether the revised Georgia statute has created greater rationality. (Mandery, 2012, p.135) The Supreme Court realized that the process in which defendants were being persecuted was not based a fairness practices; it was administrated in a different way by different judges, juries, prosecutors, etc. The Supreme Court found only how the death penalty was applied was cruel and unusual; it was too uneven and inconsistent. As a result of the 1972 Furman decision, hundreds of inmates on death row had their sentences commuted to life, and a significant number of those inmates have now been
Capital punishment results in the victims family gaining a greater sense of security, making sure the criminal is able to be punished to the highest degree for his crime, and honoring retribution. The issue of capital punishment has created a division
Is the death penalty fair? Is it humane? Does it deter crime? The answers to these questions vary depending on who answers them. The issue of capital punishment raises many debates. These same questions troubled Americans just as much in the day of the Salem witch trials as now in the say of Timothy McVeigh. During the time of the Salem witchcraft trials they had the same problem as present society faces. Twenty innocent people had been sentenced to death. It was too late to reverse the decision and the jurors admitted to their mistake. The execution of innocent people is still a major concern for American citizens today.
If you are in a rush to attend a very important meeting and you can not find a parking spot, would you risk parking your car in a restricted zone if you knew the fee would only be 25 dollars? Would you reconsider taking the risk of parking your car there if the ticket would be 500 dollars? If the consequences of an action are severe, how many people would take the risk of taking that action? If the penalty to pay for taking other people’s lives was death, would fewer people take the risk of committing such a crime? Life is the most precious possession one holds. When another human brutally robs another of this gift, it is the most heinous of all crimes. It is only justice if the punishment fits the crime committed, and for murder, the only punishment fit is the death penalty, therefore, the capital punishment should be retained in all the States as a means of justice and a clear message for potential criminals out there not to follow.
In Furman v Georgia in 1972, the Court invalidated all then-existing death penalty laws based on the inherent arbitrariness of their application. Most observers at the time concluded that there would never again be an execution in the United States. They were wrong. In 1976, in Gregg v. Georgia, the Court upheld Georgia's new capital-sentencing procedures, concluding that they had sufficiently reduced the problem of arbitrary and capricious imposition of death associated with earlier statutes.
The death penalty, ever since it was established, has created a huge controversy all throughout the world. Ever since the death penalty was created, there have been people who supported the death penalty and those who wanted to destroy it. When the death penalty was first created the methods that were used were gruesome and painful, it goes against the Eighth Amendment that was put in place many years later. The methods they used were focused on torturing the people and putting them through as much pain as possible. In today’s society the death penalty is quick and painless, it follows the Eighth Amendment. Still there are many people who are against capital punishment. The line of whether to kill a man or women for murder or to let him or her spend the rest one’s life in prison forever will never be drawn in a staight.
The death penalty has been part of the American judicial system since the country’s founding [1]. Most people see the death penalty as the fairest way to punish those who have killed, because, in the words of Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, “the instinct for retribution is part of the nature of man.” I do agree that the deliverance of justice is an important factor in any public policy. However, it is also important to consider the more pragmatic aspects, like the cost to the state. It is possible that the financial cost could be outweighed by the societal benefit. However, upon researching the death penalty, one would discover that the cost of capital punishment is unreasonably high, particularly in the state of California, especially when we consider how rarely the death sentence is actually implemented. In times like these, times of economic turmoil and scarce financial resources, the state cannot afford a system that is so expensive and also so rarely utilized. I believe that, in the state of California, the death penalty is overly expensive and so rarely implemented that it should be abolished.
Any last words before you die what some people hear right before there death. Can you think of what yours would be. The death penalty is something that should only happen when your crime is significant,but in some cases, people fall down into the unlucky group that died for nothing. When talking about the death penalty, I’m caught in the middle because death is a hard thing to wish upon another person. But in some cases, it seems like the only way for justice.
This case goes back from the year 1980. A man approached a young woman named Laura Moore at a bus stop in the Spring of 1984. The man disclosed a warning saying “ You shouldn’t be out here alone. Bad guys will pick you up, Let me take you where you have to go.” Moore, 21 at the time , agreed to take the man’s offer. As they both drove off, he then told her to put on her seat belt. When she refused, she states that the man reached under his seat, grabbed a gun and shot her six times. Moore was severely wounded, fortunately she managed to escape, but turned back to study his face. That man was Lonnie David Franklin Jr, now better-known as the serial killer the “Grim Sleeper”. Lonnie David Franklin Jr was convicted of 10-25 women 's murders. The Grim Sleeper murder’s were active during the 1980s and there was a period of time that the killings had stopped. Franklin wanted to keep a low profile. In 2002 the Grim Sleeper’s killing made a surprising return for the community of Los Angeles. For 14 years he remained inactive which raised questions for law
For instance, the 1972 Furman V. Georgia case abolished the death penalty for four years on the grounds that capital punishment was extensive with racial inequalities (Latzer 21). Over twenty five years later, those inequalities are higher than ever. The statistics says that African Americans are twelve percent of the U.S. population, but are 43 percent of the prisoners on death row. Although blacks make up 50 percent of all murder victims, 83 percent of the victims in death penalty cases are white. Since 1976 only ten executions involved a white defendant who had killed a bl...
By the mid-1960s, however, public opposition to the death penalty had reached an all-time high, and the practice was banned by the Supreme Court in the 1972 Furman v. Georgia(Furman) decision. The Court held that state death penalty statutes were devoid of any standards, and that they therefore gave too much discretion to individual judges and juries to exact the ultimate punishment. Soon after the Furman decision, states began passing new laws that provided sentencing guidelines for juries. The Supreme Court was given another opportunity to address the issue of capital punishment in 1976, in Gregg v. Georgia, and it ruled that "the punishment of death does not invariably violate the Constitution." Since this ruling, capital punishment rates have grown exponentially in the United States.