Furman v. Georgia

US Supreme Court decision of 1972 consolidating several challenges (Furman v. Georgia, Jackson v. Georgia, and Branch v. Texas) to the constitutionality of the death penalty. Three men, condemned to death by the states of Georgia and Texas, appealed against their sentences, arguing that their Eighth Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment had been violated. The Court voted 5–4 to invalidate the sentences, ruling that the death penalty not only violated the Eighth Amendment but the Fourteenth as well, since it was meted out unequally to the ‘poor and despised’. The decision affected 600 persons already on death row.