ABSTRACT
In 1972, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Furman v. Georgia that the death penalty as imposed under existing laws was unconstitutional, amounting to cruel and unusual punishment. This chapter reviews the various death penalty issues that have come before the Supreme Court. Mandatory death sentences were unmistakably abolished in Sumner v. Shuman. Mitigating evidence and Ohio's death penalty statute came under review in Lockett v. Ohio. The Ohio statute provided for the imposition of the death penalty if one of seven aggravating circumstances were found, unless the judge found at least one of three mitigating factors to be present. Several cases post-Furman have involved the issue of jury instructions toward lesser-included offenses. In the first of these, Beck v. Alabama, a judge refused to give a jury instruction for felony murder, which was a lesser-included offense of the capital crime of robbery-intentional killing.
