Legal Issues

Background and Facts
In the instant case, Gregg was charged with two crimes in a state trial court, these crimes being armed robbery and murder, and he was eventually convicted of these crimes and sentenced to the death penalty.

The death penalty was imposed after the presiding trial judge issues careful jury instructions regarding what facts would justify a recommendation for the death penalty.  These facts were aggravating circumstances and the jury found two of the aggravating circumstances to be present in the instant case.  These aggravating circumstances were that the defendant committed the murders while carrying out another felony and that the defendant committed the murders in order to obtain the money or the car of the victims.  On appeal, the Georgia Supreme Court upheld the murder convictions and the death penalty it vacated the robbery convictions only because the death penalty had not typically been applied in armed robbery cases.  Defendant appealed, arguing that the Georgia statute prescribing the conditions for the imposition of the death penalty unconstitutionally violated the cruel and unusual punishment prohibition of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution.  The United States Supreme Court, in a 7-2 decision, found the Georgia statute to be constitutional.

Controlling Constitutional Provisions and Statutes
The Georgia statute provided for the imposition of a death penalty in ways that were consistent with Supreme Court precedent.  This state law was examined against the restrictions of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the American constitution.  The Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishments and the Fourteenth Amendment makes the federal constitution binding at the state level.

Question Presented
The question presented was whether the imposition of the death penalty pursuant to the Georgia statute was unconstitutional because it was cruel and unusual within the meaning of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments.

Majority Opinion and Rationale
The majority of seven justices held that the imposition of a death penalty was not cruel and unusual so long as the legislation prescribing how the death sentence was determined met certain minimum standards.  The majority acknowledged that under certain circumstances the imposition of the death penalty might be cruel and unusual and cited Supreme Court precedent in order to outline how such a determination was to be made.  First, much deference is to be given to states and state citizens in deciding local standards of decency and cruelty.   Noting the trend for more states to enact death penalty legislation, the majority accepted that many states believed that the death penalty was not cruel and unusual in certain circumstances.  Second, addressing the underlying crime in the instant case, the majority stated that Capital punishment for the crime of murder cannot be viewed as invariably disproportionate to the severity of that crime. (Gregg v. Georgia 428 U.S. 153, 154).  Finally, and significantly, the majority noted that the Georgia legislature had rewritten its death penalty law in order to conform to previous Supreme Court rulings.  These changes included the previously mentioned jury instructions specifying aggravating and mitigating circumstances.  For these three main reasons, the majority decided that the imposition of Greggs death penalty under the Georgia statute and in his trial was not cruel and unusual.  There were no constitutional violations.

Concurring Opinions, Dissents and Rationale
Some justices concurred in the result reached by the majority but differed in terms of the rationale used to reach that same result.  Burger and Rehnquist rested their holding soely on the fact that Georgias statute was consistent with the Supreme Courts prior decision in Furman this was the case that had motivated Georgia to rewrite is death penalty legislation as previously mentioned.  Blackmun and White concurred primarily because, in addition to the state laws provision of jury instructions about aggravating and mitigating factors, it also provided for a speedy judicial review.  This emphasis may indicate that these two judges want more than mere procedural safeguards at the trial level and considered speedy appellate review an additional requirement.  Justices Brennan and Marshall dissented.  The dissents essentially argued that a death penalty was cruel and definitely painful.  The main contention was that the evolving standards of decency should not be applied solely to the procedures used for determining whether to impose the death penalty as the majority had done, but the application of these evolving standards of decency to a more enlightened notion of human dignity.  Both judges considered the death sentence to be cruel and unusual.

Significance of the Case
The significance of this case is that the Supreme Court granted the states a great deal of freedom in creating death penalty legislation so long as minimum procedural safeguards are incorporated into the process.  At the same time, the majority opinion stated that the imposition of a death penalty might be treated as cruel and unusual if these minimum safeguards were not followed.