average, 2.5 innocent defendants were released annually from death row between 1973 and 1993. David Rovella gave the following statistics in The National Law Journal: “This report comes on the 25th anniversary of Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972), which outlawed existing death penalty laws while setting the stage for Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153 (1976), which approved modern-day death penalty statutes. Currently, 38 states and the federal government have active death penalties. Since 1973, 6,000 people have been sentenced to death, and 402 have been executed.” The journal Focus had this view on the Furman v. Georgia case: “Twenty-five years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court -- in the case of Furman v. Georgia (1972) -- temporarily curbed the death penalty, because its application was arbitrary and capricious (‘wantonly and so freakishly imposed,’ to quote Justice Potter Stewart in a concurring opinion). Is the use of the death penalty today more consistent and less arbitrary?” The death penalty in Georgia and the United States continues to be used in a manner that is racist, arbitrary and unfair. Research has shown that in many cases the ethnic origin of the victim or defendant was a key factor in the prosecutors’ decision to seek the death penalty. Many of those sentenced to death in the state received poor legal representation. The racist use of the death penalty continues despite the 1972 US Supreme Court ruling in Furman v. Georgia that the arbitrary and capricious use of the death penalty was unconstitutional under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. It is said that Furman v. Georgia was a landmark decision but in essence it changed nothing. It proved to be a mere problem in the long running practice of the death penalty. BIBLIOGRAPHY:1. Amnesty International Country Report: The death penalty in Georgia: racist, arbitrary and unfair. 1996.2. Brundage, Fitzhugh. “Lynching in the New...
