Gregg V. Georgia's Death Penalty

1247 Words3 Pages

Since colonial times, Georgia has been associated with capital punishment, with executions recorded as early as the 1730s. Crimes including murder, rape and robbery were punishable by capital punishment. Prior to the 1920s, hanging was a method used to execute individuals committing criminal acts. Others, were condemned by a firing squad and burned to death. In 1924, Georgia first utilized the electric chair to execute inmates. Electrocution overthrew hanging as the primary method of execution until 2001, where the Georgia Supreme Court declared the practice as “unconstitutional and unusual”. After that declaration, Georgia shifted to using lethal injection. Georgia proceeded to execute more than 900 people, making it the fourth highest number …show more content…

On June 29, 1972 the Supreme Court proceeded to nullify 40 death penalty statutes. Thus, removing 629 inmates from death row. After the trial, the death penalty was suspended throughout the United States. William Furman remained incarcerated until his parole in 1984 (Death Penalty Information Center, 2011).
After the Supreme Court changed the rules of capital punishment, many states rewrote their death penalty statutes. Gregg v. Georgia became the first man (Troy Leon Gregg) in Georgia to be convicted under Georgia’s new statute. Gregg was found guilty for two counts of armed robbery and murder and was sentenced to death. Greg had two trials- one for determining guilt and the second trial for sentencing.
The Supreme Court felt that the death penalty in his case was constitutional and that the eighth amendment was not violated because there was significant evidence of “aggravating circumstances” where it was necessary to impose the death penalty. Gregg disagreed and said the death penalty itself is unconstitutional and that it violated the eight (cruel and unusual punishment) and fourteenth (civil rights) amendment. The court heard his case in 1976 and

Show More
Related

  • Tennessee v. Garner 1985

    806 Words  | 2 Pages

    Facts:          On October 3, 1974, Memphis Police Officers Hymon and Wright were dispatched to answer a “prowler inside call.” When the police arrived at the scene, a neighbor gestured to the house where she had heard glass breaking and that someone was breaking into the house. While one of the officer radioed that they were on the scene, the other officer went to the rear of the house hearing a door slam and saw someone run across the backyard. The suspect, Edward Garner stopped at a 6-feet-high fence at the edge of the yard and proceeded to climb the fence as the police officer called out “police, halt.” The police officer figured that if Garner made it over the fence he would get away and also “figured” that Garner was unarmed. Officer Hymon then shot him, hitting him in the back of the head. In using deadly force to prevent the escape of Garner, Hymon used the argument that actions were made under the authority of the Tennessee statute and pursuant to Police Department policy. Although the department’s policy was slightly more restrictive than the statute it still allowed the use of deadly force in cases of burglary. Garner’s fathers’ argument was made that his son was shot unconstitutionally because he was captured and shot possessing ten dollars that he had stolen and being unarmed showing no threat of danger to the officer. The incident was then reviewed by the Memphis Police Firearm’s Revie...

    Read More

  • Georgia Vs. Randolph Case Study

    1227 Words  | 3 Pages

    .... Madison was applied to this decision because the actions committed were unconstitutional. According to the Supreme Court the 8th Amendment was broken because the District Court of Appeal was giving a cruel and unusual punishment to Graham. The 8th amendment claus does not allow a juvenile offender to be sentenced to life in jail without a parole for a non-homicidal crime. Therefore Terrance could not fall through with this punishment.

    Read More

  • Furman v. Georgia: The Death Penalty Case

    854 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...d some publicity, and several lawyers were now handling his appeal,” (Furman v. Georgia). The first step was the Georgia Supreme Court. The court unanimously voted to uphold the lower court’s decision of the death penalty. The Chief Justice, W. H. Duckworth, gave Furman time to petition to the US Supreme Court before the execution was finalized. The Supreme Court approved. And thus, the official Furman v. Georgia case had begun. “I admit going to these folks' home and they did caught me in there and I was coming back out, backing up and there was a wire down there on the floor. I was coming out backwards and fell back and I didn't intend to kill nobody . . . The gun went off and I didn't know nothing about no murder until they arrested me, and when the gun went off I was down on the floor and I got up and ran. That's all to it,” (Official Supreme Court Transcript).

    Read More

  • Capital Punishment: The Ford V. Wainwright Case

    902 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the case Ford v. Wainwright the court chose to side with Wainwright. Wainwright won this case since the courts felt the need to go against the eighth amendment since the amendment was not set in stone according to them. Yes, Ford was insane he shot the cop and must have not been held up to it or at the most being executed according to the eighth amendment. Was executing Ford a slightly over the top existence that he was insane? Although ford died while awaiting his execution he was still going to be executed, he still lost the case. Although Ford was convicted from killing a cop the detail that he was insane still doesn’t change so should the amendment?

    Read More

  • Worchester v. Georgia

    1117 Words  | 3 Pages

    The case Worcester v. Georgia (1832) was a basis for the discussion of the issue of states' rights versus the federal government as played out in the administration of President Andrew Jackson and its battle with the Supreme Court. In addition to the constitutional issues involved, the momentum of the westward movement and popular support for Indian resettlement pitted white man against Indian. All of these factors came together in the Worcester case, which alarmed the independence of the Cherokee Nation, but which was not enforced. This examines the legal issues and tragic consequences of Indian resettlement.

    Read More

  • The Supreme Court Law Governing the Use of Victim Impact Statements

    607 Words  | 2 Pages

    Weems v. United States (1910) set a judicial precedent for showing that punishment must be proportionate to the crime committed and allowed courts to decide what is “cruel and unusual”. Lower courts allowed the VIS and that use sometimes came under question. Thus the case was sent to the U.S. Supreme Court to review. In Booth v. Maryland (1987) and Gathers v. South Carolina (1989) the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that VIS could potentially lead to harsher sentences and yet upon further review reconsider their stance on VIS and overturn their decisions and concluded that the Eight Amendment was not violated by victim Impact statements on the ground that such statements did not lead to cruel and unusual punish...

    Read More

  • Furman v. Georgia

    2725 Words  | 6 Pages

    Opponents of the death punishment lauded the Supreme Court decision in the 1972 ruling that a jury's unregulated option to impose the death penalty led toward a "wanton and freakish pattern of its use" that was cruel and unusual. However, the anti-death penalty lobby was not the outright winners because the court failed to call the death penalty unconstitutional. Just a few years later, capital punishment was back with full force in the United States.

    Read More

  • Lawrence V. Texas

    1308 Words  | 3 Pages

    Lawrence v. Texas In the case Lawrence v. Texas (539 U.S. 558, 2003) which was the United States Supreme Court case the criminal prohibition of the homosexual pederasty was invalidated in Texas. The same issue has been already addressed in 1989 in the case Bowers v. Hardwick, however, the constitutional protection of sexual privacy was not found at that time. Lawrence overruled Bowers and held that sexual conduct was the right protected by the due process under the Fourteenth Amendment. The effects of the ruling were quite widespread and led to invalidation of the similar laws throughout the United States that tried to criminalize the homosexual activity of adults who were acting in privacy.

    Read More

  • Argument Against Capital Punishment in Australia

    2208 Words  | 5 Pages

    In the 19th century capital punishment was to only be inflicted by the methods such as hanging, electrocution, the gas chamber, firing squad and lethal injection. The history of capital punishment in Aust... ... middle of paper ... ... tions/tandi/tandi03.html. 6.

    Read More

  • The Supreme Court Case: Furman V. Georgia

    1188 Words  | 3 Pages

    Since Furman v. Georgia, the Supreme Court struck down Georgia’s death penalty due to infrequencies and the randomness of the imposition of the death penalty. (Mandery, 2012, p.135). The two justices who switched sides between the Furman case and the Gregg case, both expressed mayor concern in Furman with the infrequency and randomness with which juries imposed the death penalty. “For Justice Potter Stewart, the arbitrariness was a matter of fairness. For Justice Byron White, the concern was utilitarian a randomly and infrequently imposed death penalty could not possibly deter” (Mandery, 2012, p.135), they both expressed similar concerns about the apparent arbitrariness with which death sentences were imposed under the existing law, each found the unpredictability of the original statute fatal, it seems only fair to ask whether the revised Georgia statute has created greater rationality. (Mandery, 2012, p.135) The Supreme Court realized that the process in which defendants were being persecuted was not based a fairness practices; it was administrated in a different way by different judges, juries, prosecutors, etc. The Supreme Court found only how the death penalty was applied was cruel and unusual; it was too uneven and inconsistent. As a result of the 1972 Furman decision, hundreds of inmates on death row had their sentences commuted to life, and a significant number of those inmates have now been

    Read More

  • Importance Of The 8th Amendment

    762 Words  | 2 Pages

    ... rape or treason was committed ("8th Amendment to the Constitution – U.S. Amendment VIII Summary"). However, there are some cases where the death penalty is unacceptable regardless of the crime. In the Supreme Court case of Roper v Simmons the court decided that the execution of someone for a crime they committed when they were a minor violated the eighth amendment . The court case of Atkins v Virginia established that the death penalty is not an acceptable punishment for mentally ill felons (Lemieux, "The Supreme Court's Empty Eighth Amendment Promise"). The Supreme Court has also ruled that executing anyone under the age of 18 is an act of cruel and unusual punishment ("8th Amendment to the Constitution – U.S. Amendment VIII Summary"). The death penalty is the worst punishment a person could get, and because of that there are many restrictions on when to use it.

    Read More

  • The Controversy Surrounding the Death Penalty

    1121 Words  | 3 Pages

    By the mid 1960s, the death penalty seemed fated for extinction. Only seven executions were conducted in 1965 and only one in 1966. For about ten years supporters and opposers of capital punishment looked to the Supreme Court for a final ruling on the constitutionality of the death penalty. The word came out in 1976 in the case of Gregg v. Georgia. The court ruled that, " the punishment of death does not violate the Constitution."

    Read More

  • Capital Punishment Essay: The Death Penalty and the Eighth Amendment

    597 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Furman v Georgia in 1972, the Court invalidated all then-existing death penalty laws based on the inherent arbitrariness of their application. Most observers at the time concluded that there would never again be an execution in the United States. They were wrong. In 1976, in Gregg v. Georgia, the Court upheld Georgia's new capital-sentencing procedures, concluding that they had sufficiently reduced the problem of arbitrary and capricious imposition of death associated with earlier statutes.

    Read More

  • The Ethics of Capital Punishment

    1503 Words  | 4 Pages

    During those years, the Supreme Court ruled that capital punishment violated the Eight Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. However, this ended in 1976, when the Supreme Court reversed the ruling. They stated that the punishment of sentencing one to death does not perpetually infringe the Constitution. Richard Nixon said, “Contrary to the views of some social theorists, I am convinced that the death penalty can be an effective deterrent against specific crimes. ”1 Whether the case be morally, monetarily, or just pure disagreement, citizens have argued the benefits of capital punishment.

    Read More

  • Why the Death Penalty Should Be Abolished

    1035 Words  | 3 Pages

    For instance, the 1972 Furman V. Georgia case abolished the death penalty for four years on the grounds that capital punishment was extensive with racial inequalities (Latzer 21). Over twenty five years later, those inequalities are higher than ever. The statistics says that African Americans are twelve percent of the U.S. population, but are 43 percent of the prisoners on death row. Although blacks make up 50 percent of all murder victims, 83 percent of the victims in death penalty cases are white. Since 1976 only ten executions involved a white defendant who had killed a bl...

    Read More

More about Gregg V. Georgia's Death Penalty

Open Document