Furman v. Georgia
In the above case, the U.S. Supreme Court found for the first time that the death penalty in this case was unconstitutional. The petitioner William Henry Furman was committing a burglary in a home when his weapon accidentally killed a resident therein. Georgia court convicted Furman for murder and awarded death sentence. Along with this, two other cases Jackson v Georgia and Branch v Texas that awarded death sentence for rape were decided by the Supreme Court on the question whether death sentence in these cases constituted cruel and unusual punishment violating Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. The U.S. Supreme Court reversed the ...