Highlighted crime
story of the week -
On June 29, 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled by a vote
of 5-4 vote in the Furman v. Georgia case, that capital punishment, as it is
currently employed on the state and federal level, is unconstitutional. The
majority held that, in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution,
the death penalty qualified as “cruel and unusual punishment,” primarily because
states employed execution in “arbitrary and capricious ways,” especially in
regard to race. It was the first time that the nation’s highest court had ruled
against capital punishment. However, because the Supreme Court suggested new
legislation that could make death sentences constitutional again, such as the
development of standardized guidelines for juries that decide sentences, it was
not an outright victory for opponents of the death penalty.
In 1976, with 66 percent of Americans still supporting
capital punishment, the Supreme Court acknowledged progress made in jury
guidelines and reinstated the death penalty under a “model of guided
discretion.” In 1977, Gary Gilmore, a career criminal who had murdered an
elderly couple because they would not lend him their car, was the first person
to be executed since the end of the ban. Defiantly facing a firing squad in
Utah, Gilmore’s last words to his executioners before they shot him through the
heart were, “Let’s do it.”
Check back every
Monday for a new installment of “This Week in Crime History.”
Michael Thomas Barry is a columnist for www.crimemagazine.com and is the author
of seven nonfiction books that includes In
the Company of Evil Thirty Years of California Crime 1950-1980. Visit
Michael’s website www.michaelthomasbarry.com
for more information. His book can be purchased from Amazon through the
following link:
