On 50th Anniversary of Court Ruling, Death Penalty Lives On
“The data show a wasteful punishment, incompetently applied and beset by arbitrary factors such as race, place, and time,” Death Penalty Information Center Director Robert Dunham said in a statement marking the 50th anniversary of Furman v. Georgia.
Landwebs
50 years ago today, the Supreme Court in their opinion on Furman v. Georgia halted the death penalty across the country in response to a set of capital punishment cases. The decision forced federal and state governments to review their statutes to ensure that administration of the death penalty did not discriminate and was applied consistent to the Eight Amendment, prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment.
During the short period following Furman, states were ordered to commute existing death penalty sentences to life in prison.
The Furman decision was a de facto ban on the death penalty for four years, until the justices’ decision to affirm the death penalty in Gregg v. Georgia.
Does that mean that since Furman, states have perfected the death penalty, making the process consistent and nondiscriminatory as the Court ordered? The country still hasn’t figured that out, according to a new report the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit advocacy group.
A database built by the Washington, D.C.-based organization contains every one of the 9,737 death penalty convictions handed down between the first execution after Gregg and Jan 1, 2021, the Ohio Capital Journal reports.
“After 50 years, the data show a wasteful punishment, incompetently applied and beset by arbitrary factors such as race, place, and time,” Death Penalty Information Center Director Robert Dunham said in a statement.
At least 189 people sentenced to the death penalty since 1973 were later exonerated. The center’s count shows that the justice system failed those Americans, at best, over 10 percent of the time. Additionally, 34 percent of executions over the last 50 years were of Black people, while just over 13 percent of Americans are Black, showing the same overrepresented of death sentences for Black Americans that the Court called out in 1972.
“The court said America wasn’t able to administer the death penalty fairly or reliably a half century ago. The data show we still can’t do it today,” Dunham said.
