Gregg v. Georgia

The Court upheld revised death penalty statutes with guided jury discretion, ending the four-year national moratorium.

Overview

Georgia rewrote its capital statute after Furman, requiring separate trials for guilt and sentencing, statutory aggravating circumstances, and automatic appellate review. The Court held that the death penalty is not inherently cruel and unusual for murder, and that careful channeling of jury discretion could cure the arbitrariness that doomed the old statutes. Executions resumed in 1977 after a decade-long pause. Gregg, with companion cases, restored capital punishment nationally and sustained it against later statistical challenges, even as states have increasingly restricted or abolished the penalty in recent years.