What is a petition for writ of habeus corpus Essay

What is a petition for writ of habeus corpus - Essay Example The Supreme Court also declared that Georgia’s death penalty was not constitutional. The huge publicity to the case helped eminent lawyers like Amsterdam to fight the case of Furman, who was poor and most importantly, black. Amsterdam was able to show that the judgment was biased and heavily discriminated because the defendant was not only poor but also black. He argued that the jury did not have any guidance regarding the death sentence and the verdict was random mainly based on the discriminatory practices of the individuals. Amsterdam said that jury often just listens to the evidence of guilt and decides if the defendant deserves to die. The same cases often have the same conviction. Most of the sentences of death penalty are of those who are black, poor, mentally ill or uneducated. The wealthy, white or mentally healthy people rarely get death sentence (Steins, 1995). Judge, Douglas had also declared that death penalty had targeted the unpopular segment of society and therefore was unconstitutional under Eighth