Gregg v. Georgia

Gregg v. Georgia
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued March 30–31, 1976 Decided July 2, 1976
Full case name	Troy Leon Gregg v. State of Georgia; Charles William Proffitt v. State of Florida; Jerry Lane Jurek v. State of Texas; James Tyrone Woodson, et al. v. State of North Carolina; Roberts, et al. v. Louisiana
Citations	428 U.S. 153 (more) 96 S. Ct. 2909; 49 L. Ed. 2d 859; 1976 U.S. LEXIS 82
Case history
Prior	Certiorari to the Supreme Courts of Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, and Louisiana, and the Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas
Holding
The imposition of the death penalty does not, automatically, violate the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment. If the jury is furnished with standards to direct and limit the sentencing discretion, and the jury's decision is subjected to meaningful appellate review, the death sentence may be constitutional. If, however, the death penalty is mandatory, such that there is no provision for mercy based on the characteristics of the offender, then it is unconstitutional.
Court membership
Chief Justice Warren E. Burger Associate Justices William J. Brennan Jr. · Potter Stewart Byron White · Thurgood Marshall Harry Blackmun · Lewis F. Powell Jr. William Rehnquist · John P. Stevens
Case opinions
Plurality	Stewart, Powell, Stevens
Concurrence	White (in judgment), joined by Burger, Rehnquist
Concurrence	Burger, Rehnquist (in judgment)
Concurrence	Blackmun (in judgment)
Dissent	Brennan
Dissent	Marshall
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amends. VIII, XIV

Gregg v. Georgia, Proffitt v. Florida, Jurek v. Texas, Woodson v. North Carolina, and Roberts v. Louisiana, 428 U.S. 153 (1976), is a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court. It reaffirmed the Court's acceptance of the use of the death penalty in the United States, upholding, in particular, the death sentence imposed on Troy Leon Gregg. The set of cases is referred to by a leading scholar as the July 2 Cases,^[1] and elsewhere referred to by the lead case Gregg. The court set forth the two main features that capital sentencing procedures must employ in order to comply with the Eighth Amendment ban on "cruel and unusual punishments". The decision essentially ended the de facto moratorium on the death penalty imposed by the Court in its 1972 decision in Furman v. Georgia (1972). Justice Brennan's dissent famously argued that "The calculated killing of a human being by the State involves, by its very nature, a denial of the executed person's humanity ... An executed person has indeed 'lost the right to have rights.'"^[2][3]