Woodson v. North Carolina - Significance

Woodson v. North Carolina tested the Court's resolve with regard to its 1972 Furman v. Georgia ruling when it found that a Georgia death penalty law amounted to cruel and unusual punishment as proscribed by the Eighth Amendment. Woodson was one of the five "Death Penalty Cases" of 1976, along with Gregg v. Georgia, Jurek v. Texas, Proffitt v. Florida, and Roberts v. Louisiana, the latter decided on the same day as Woodson. The first three affirmed state death penalties, whereas Woodson and Roberts struck down mandatory death sentences. Rather that settling death penalty issues for all time, however, these cases raised questions which continued to be debated with increasing passion over subsequent decades.