Significance: This ruling upheld states’ rights to impose the death penalty, but it required that capital punishment laws must contain built-in safeguards to ensure that the death sentence would not be unfairly or unequally imposed.
Background: A Georgia court convicted Troy Gregg of robbing and murdering two people. The jury in this case was given the option of sentencing Gregg to death (instead of prison) if it found that certain aggravating circumstances existed. The jury decided that the combination of robbery and murder qualified as aggravating circumstances, and it sentenced Gregg to death. Gregg appealed, arguing that the death penalty violated the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments as “cruel and unusual” punishment. He also charged that the standards for imposing capital punishment were unfair because they gave juries too much leeway.
Decision: This case was argued on March 31, 1976, and decided on July 2, 1976, by a vote of 7 to 2. Justice Potter Stewart spoke for the Court, which ruled against Gregg. The Supreme Court maintained that the death penalty itself was not unconstitutional. Rather the “cruel and unusual” standard applied only to the means of execution. The Court also said that the sentencing standards gave jurors enough guidance in deciding when to impose capital punishment. Justices William Brennan Jr. and Thurgood Marshall dissented, arguing that the death penalty in any form was “cruel and unusual” punishment.
Excerpt from the Opinion of the Court: “When a life has been taken deliberately by the offender, we cannot say that the punishment is invariably [unchangingly] disproportionate to the crime. It is an extreme sanction [penalty], suitable to the most extreme of crimes. We hold that the death penalty is not a form of punishment that may never be imposed, regardless of the circumstances of the offense, regardless of the character of the offender, and regardless of the procedure followed in reaching the decision to impose it.”
