The Georgia State Bar’s constitutional symposium recently staged a reenactment of Furman v. Georgia, the U.S. Supreme Court case that led to the temporary suspension of the death penalty in 1972. Stephen Bright (pictured), president of the Southern Center for Human Rights, played the role of Anthony Amsterdam, who argued on behalf of death row inmates in two of the four cases that the Court decided in Furman. The roles of the justices were performed by Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Hugh Thompson, Georgia Court of Appeals Chief Judge Herbert Phipps and Judge Beverly Martin of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Bright argued that the death penalty violated the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment because it was applied rarely and randomly. The judges asked about many of the details of Furman’s trial, noting that the entire trial took just six hours, and that blacks and Jews were excluded from the jury. The judges in the reenactment did not offer their opinions on the case, but the real Furman v. Georgia resulted in a 5-4 decision to suspend the death penalty, with some in the majority saying it was imposed arbitrarily and others saying the death penalty was unconstitutional in all cases.

(A. Palmer, “Death Row Case is Reenacted After 42 Years,” Daily Report, March 14, 2014.) See History of the Death Penalty and U.S. Supreme Court.

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