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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