“I Just Wanted…to Stay Alive”: Who was William Henry Furman, the Prisoner at the Center of a Historic Legal Decision?

Furman v. Georgia was one of the most mon­u­men­tal cas­es in American legal his­to­ry: the 1972 deci­sion over­turned every state death penal­ty statute in the coun­try and spared the lives of near­ly six hun­dred peo­ple sen­tenced to die. But the lead peti­tion­er, William Henry Furman, was lit­tle aware of his impact. Poor, Black, men­tal­ly ill, and phys­i­cal­ly and intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled, he was sen­tenced to death for the killing of a home­own­er dur­ing a botched rob­bery, which he main­tains was acci­den­tal. ​“If…petitioner Furman or his crime illus­trates the ​‘extreme,’ then near­ly all mur­der­ers and their mur­ders are also ​‘extreme,’” wrote Justice William Brennan in the deci­sion. Now elder­ly, Mr. Furman lives qui­et­ly in Georgia and con­tin­ues to oppose the death penalty.

Before the night of August 11, 1967, 24-year-old Mr. Furman had been liv­ing with his moth­er and work­ing con­struc­tion. With only a sixth-grade edu­ca­tion, and suf­fer­ing from bouts of psy­chosis brought on by epilep­sy, he strug­gled to make ends meet amidst a grow­ing depen­den­cy on alco­hol. He had a string of con­vic­tions for pet­ty crimes and says he was known as the ​“Bungling Burglar.” He broke into the home of William Micke after a day of heavy drink­ing hop­ing only ​“to pick up a radio or two.” But Mr. Micke heard a noise and woke up. Mr. Furman fired a gun through a closed door as he fled, killing Mr. Micke with one shot. According to Mr. Furman, the gun went off when he tripped on a wire from the wash­ing machine, and he had no idea he had hit anyone. 

Police fol­lowed a set of tracks and found Mr. Furman hid­ing under his uncle’s porch with the gun in his pock­et with­in min­utes of the death. Mr. Furman con­fessed to break­ing into the home and fir­ing his weapon, but as David Oshinsky wrote in his book chron­i­cling the his­to­ry of the case, Mr. Furman ​“seemed stunned to learn that the home­own­er was dead.” The state charged Mr. Furman with felony mur­der and sought the death penal­ty. The court then appoint­ed local lawyer B. Clarence Mayfield to rep­re­sent Mr. Furman for $150 — a stroke of luck which even­tu­al­ly brought the case to the atten­tion of promi­nent abo­li­tion­ists look­ing for a vehi­cle to chal­lenge the death penal­ty at the Supreme Court. 

Mr. Mayfield was one of the only Black attor­neys in Savannah and was close­ly involved with the Civil Rights Movement. According to Mr. Oshinsky, Mr. Mayfield viewed the death penal­ty ​“as a pun­ish­ment reserved for society’s out­casts, espe­cial­ly poor blacks” like Mr. Furman. Mr. Mayfield entered a plea of insan­i­ty and had Mr. Furman med­ical­ly eval­u­at­ed before tri­al; a pan­el of doc­tors at Georgia Central State Hospital unan­i­mous­ly agreed on a diag­no­sis of ​“men­tal defi­cien­cy, mild to mod­er­ate, with psy­chot­ic episodes asso­ci­at­ed with con­vul­sive dis­or­der [epilep­sy].” They found that Mr. Furman was ​“not capa­ble of coop­er­at­ing with his coun­sel in the prepa­ra­tion of his defense” and rec­om­mend­ed fur­ther psy­chi­atric hos­pi­tal­iza­tion. Despite these find­ings, the court judged Mr. Furman com­pe­tent to stand trial. 

Mr. Mayfield called Mr. Furman to tes­ti­fy at tri­al and explain that the shoot­ing was an acci­dent and he ​“didn’t intend to kill nobody,” but was not sur­prised when the jury returned a find­ing of guilty and a sen­tence of death the same day. With a jury of 11 whites and one Black in 1960s Georgia, Mr. Mayfield saw the out­come as near­ly inevitable. However, he raised aware­ness of the case with his civ­il rights col­leagues, which led to Mr. Furman’s appeal even­tu­al­ly being select­ed by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF) in their con­sti­tu­tion­al chal­lenge to capital punishment. 

Though Mr. Furman had been judged com­pe­tent at tri­al, the state sent him back to Georgia Central State Hospital after his tri­al instead of to death row, in an appar­ent acknowl­edge­ment of his seri­ous men­tal impair­ments. He was there on January 17, 1972 when LDF lawyer Anthony Amsterdam argued on his behalf at the Supreme Court that death sen­tences were inflict­ed on the ​“pre­dom­i­nant­ly poor, Black, per­son­al­ly ugly, and social­ly unac­cept­able.” Mr. Furman remem­bers watch­ing reporters arrive through the bars on his win­dow at the hos­pi­tal six months lat­er on June 29, the morn­ing the deci­sion in Furman v. Georgia was announced. Mr. Mayfield also drove to the hos­pi­tal to deliv­er the news to Mr. Furman direct­ly. However, Mr. Oshinsky writes, Mr. Furman ​“stared blankly at his lawyer, unable to rec­og­nize him, much less under­stand the legal his­to­ry they had made.” 

Mr. Furman was released on parole in 1984 and strug­gled to land on his feet. He spo­rad­i­cal­ly worked con­struc­tion and went through peri­ods of home­less­ness, tak­ing shel­ter in cars and aban­doned hous­es. Legal jour­nal­ist Joan Cheever tracked Mr. Furman down in the late 1990s as part of her project inves­ti­gat­ing the out­comes of the ​“Class of ​‘72” — the peo­ple who had their death sen­tences over­turned as a result of Mr. Furman’s case. After look­ing for Mr. Furman for 13 years, she found him liv­ing in Atlanta in a duplex, in poor health but, as she described it, a strong zeal to live. 

Mr. Furman told her that he’d had two heart attacks since his release, expe­ri­enced dif­fi­cul­ty breath­ing, could not walk for long peri­ods, and had to quit con­struc­tion work. However, he had also quit drink­ing, and he spent his time vol­un­teer­ing at a Methodist soup kitchen and col­lect­ing alu­minum cans. He had nev­er mar­ried and had no chil­dren. ​“It’s still rough on me,” he told Ms. Cheever of his expe­ri­ence. ​“I think about it a lot. Once or twice I thought I would be exe­cut­ed. I came close to death. I try to put it in the back of my mind. I think to myself — I’m here. I have more time.” 

In 2006, Mr. Furman was sent back to prison for bur­glary. He was released in 2016. Reuters report­ed at the time of his release that Mr. Furman ​“wants to share his expe­ri­ences with young peo­ple, coun­sel­ing them to avoid the alco­holism and pet­ty theft” that led to the events of August 11, 1967. ​“I still believe the death penal­ty is cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment,” Mr. Furman said. 

Ms. Cheever once asked him how he felt about his ​“con­tri­bu­tion to the abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty.” He seemed star­tled, she wrote. She repeat­ed: ​“Mr. Furman, your case is the one respon­si­ble for sav­ing the lives of 588 peo­ple on death row. How do you feel?” He shrugged. ​“I didn’t do noth­ing back then but try to stay alive. I just wanted…to stay alive.”