Video: 'Furman v. Georgia (1972) | A Moratorium on the Death Penalty'

(Thursday, June 29, 1972) — The Supreme Court, in Furman v. Georgia, ruled 5-4 today that capital punishment, as currently administered under American state laws, violated constitutional guarantees against cruel and unusual punishment.

Video: 'Furman v. Georgia: Capital Punishment in the United States'

The case led to a de facto moratorium on the death penalty throughout the United States for four years. All 629 American prisoners on death row were spared by the ruling, including William Henry Furman, who would be paroled in 1984.

No person had been executed in America since June 2, 1967, when Luis Monge died in the gas chamber in Colorado. On Jan. 17, 1977, Gary Gilmore (in Utah) became the first American prisoner to be executed after individual states passed new laws to comply with the Furman guidelines.