The Case Of Gregg V. Georgia

Gregg v. Georgia: Punishable by Death

Hunter Alto

AP Government-3AB

1-7-18

 Many Americans debate over the use of the death penalty as a capital punishment. Some argue that it is inhumane to kill somebody or the form in which they use to kill somebody can be botched making it extremely painful. While others will argue that the death penalty is an adequate punishment for those who have committed a serious crime. As Americans we have many liberties and freedoms which protect us from the government and other people being unusually cruel to us when giving someone a penance for a crime they have committed. This freedom is established in the 8th Amendment of the United States Constitution, which says “Excessive bail shall not be required,

Georgia the death penalty was said to be cruel or unusual punishment when used as a punishment for even serious crimes and was claimed Unconstitutional. In Mccleskey v. Kemp the defendant tried to argue that discrimination played a part in how often the death penalty was used. Many people in the judicial system argued this was not the case. When the Supreme Court made its decision it was immediately met with ridicule saying that this showed they were condoning racism. In the case of Gregg v. Georgia the prosecution said that in the case of two murders during a robbery that the capital punishment was not “cruel and unusual” punishment. In this case Troy Gregg got a bad draw of which state he was in due to the fact that after the decision of Furman v. Georgia that capital punishment would be outlawed in the United States but directly after the decision Georgia came up with new death penalty laws. Some state legislatures reformed their statutes to deal with the problem of undue jury discretion identified in Furman v. Georgia by mandating capital punishment for all persons convicted of first-degree murder. In the case Troy Gregg admitted to killing the two people but claimed he did so in self defense. The Georgia General Assembly decided to deal with concerns about the planned act of the death penalty by adopting "guided discretion" sentencing. Under this approach, if a defendant was convicted of first-degree murder or another capital punishment offense,

Georgia was a very big case and had a lot of impact on future cases. It reinstated the ability to sentence the death penalty. This overturned the opinion in its precedent case Furman v. Georgia, which said that the death penalty was a violation of the U.S Constitution. It has been set as a precedent for any case that involves someone who has committed a serious or violent crime and has the ability to be given the death penalty.The most important impact was the decision that capital punishment was constitutional so long as the procedures involved in its execution did not violate the Eighth Amendment to the