Gregg v. Georgia Case Brief & Ruling | Summary & Significance
Table of Contents
- Gregg v. Georgia: Summary and Overview
- Gregg v. Georgia Background
- Troy Leon Gregg
- Furman v. Georgia
- Gregg v. Georgia Case Brief
- Gregg v. Georgia Facts
- Gregg v. Georgia Larger Issues
- Gregg v. Georgia Significance
- Lesson Summary
What happened in the Gregg v. Georgia case?
In Gregg v. Georgia (1976), Troy Leon Gregg was convicted of armed robbery and murder and sentenced to death. Gregg appealed his decision to the U.S. Supreme Court after the trial court's actions were affirmed by the Georgia Supreme Court. His appeal was based upon precedent set in a prior case, Furman v. Georgia (1972), in which the Supreme Court ruled states' administration of the death penalty was "arbitrary or capricious" (inconsistent and unfair). In the 1976 case, Gregg v. Georgia, the Supreme Court sided with Georgia, one of the states that had since revised its penal code to include bifurcated sentencing and appellate review of death penalty cases.
Why was Gregg v. Georgia important?
Gregg v. Georgia affirmed states' inclusion of the death penalty in penal codes, as long as fair and consistent sentencing procedures are used. This ended the moratorium that had been in place since the Furman decision in 1972. Today, most states have death penalty statutes.
What did Leon Gregg do?
Troy Leon Gregg, a hitchhiker, shot and killed two men who had agreed to give him, his traveling companion, and a third hitchhiker a ride north along the Florida Turnpike into Georgia. After the third hitchhiker was dropped off in Atlanta, Gregg acted alone in shooting Fred Simmons and Bob Moore, robbing them of their cash, stealing their car, and leaving them to die in a drainage ditch near a busy Atlanta highway.
Table of Contents
- Gregg v. Georgia: Summary and Overview
- Gregg v. Georgia Background
- Troy Leon Gregg
- Furman v. Georgia
- Gregg v. Georgia Case Brief
- Gregg v. Georgia Facts
- Gregg v. Georgia Larger Issues
- Gregg v. Georgia Significance
- Lesson Summary
Is the death penalty the sort of cruel and unusual punishment that the eighth amendment forbids? The U.S. Supreme Court was asked to decide this question in the case, Gregg v. Georgia (1976). The defendant, Troy Leon Gregg, was convicted of murder by a Georgia jury and sentenced to death. He appealed the decision based upon precedent set in Furman v. Georgia (1972), when the Supreme Court ruled that states' imposition of the death penalty was neither consistent nor fair. Subsequently, thirty-five states, including Georgia, revised sentencing procedures to comply with the high court's ruling to include a bifurcated (two-step) process in convicting and sentencing defendants accused of murder. Though Gregg lost his appeal, "Gregg v. Georgia" is important because the Supreme Court's decision in this case affirmed states' use of the death penalty in murder cases, as long as it is not applied "arbitrarily or capriciously".
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The election of Governor Jimmy Carter in 1970 began a number of progressive reforms that challenged long-held norms in this former Confederate state. Once set in motion, white supremacist and patriarchal assumptions began to lose their foothold. For example, the 19th Amendment was at last ratified by the state legislature on February 20, 1970, a largely symbolic move that occurred nearly fifty years after the amendment granted suffrage to women nationwide. Jim Crow traditions were challenged, as well.
Just ten years before Carter's election, segregationist Georgia Governor Ernest Vandiver, Jr. asked the state legislature to consider statewide school closures as an alternative to the integration required by the Brown v. Board of Education ruling (1954). This attempt was unsuccessful. After the Brown decision, the Civil Rights Movement picked up speed. Atlanta was home to Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and the Albany Movement, strengthened by King's involvement, further confronted segregation between 1961 and 1962. Carl Sanders, a moderate Democrat, was elected governor in 1962 and worked to bring Georgia into alignment with national civil rights trends. But in the wake of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, white voters were not ready to give the Democratic Party free rein, instead electing segregationist Lestor Maddox in 1966 when Sanders didn't seek reelection. Republican governors continued to hold office in Georgia until Carter's election.
Georgia's economic position was also evolving. Between 1950 and 1970, this once-predominantly agricultural economy became more reliant upon manufacturing. Low-wage factory jobs gradually gave way to the growing services sector, however. With new interstate highways and the Hartsfield-Jackson Airport, Atlanta's commercial growth sharply outpaced outlying rural areas. Gwinnett County jurors, in a Superior Court northeast of Atlanta, would later convict Troy Gregg, a young white male, of murder.
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In late November of 1973, twenty-five-year-old Troy Leon Gregg was hitchhiking north in Florida with Floyd "Sam" Allen, age sixteen. The two were picked up by Fred Simmons and Bob Moore, who agreed to give them a ride into Georgia. They had just $8 to make the journey. A third hitchhiker, Dennis Weaver, was picked up en route and dropped off in Atlanta at the interchange of I-85 and Georgia Highway 23. Before the trip ended in Asheville, North Carolina, their hosts would be dead and robbed of the car and the cash in their pockets. They lay in the drainage ditch where Gregg shot them until police discovered their bodies. Two days later, Dennis Weaver noticed a newspaper headline that led him to provide law enforcement with information resulting in Gregg's apprehension. In 1974, Gregg was convicted of robbery and murder, with Sam Allen testifying against him, and sentenced to death. His appeal was denied, a decision later upheld by the Georgia State Supreme Court and, on review, by the U.S. Supreme Court. The night before he was to die in the electric chair in July, 1980, Gregg escaped from prison with three other inmates. He soon died after getting into a fight at a North Carolina bar.
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In 1972, the Supreme Court broke precedent in its 5-4 decision that the death penalty, as applied, was unconstitutional. In its review, the Court looked at three Georgia and Texas cases. All defendants were black. Two had been convicted of rape. The other, Furman, was convicted of murder after his gun went off as he was fleeing the home he had burglarized, killing the resident. Under Georgia state law, because the gun was fired during the commission of a felony, the death penalty was appropriate, a sentence upheld by the Georgia Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on January 17, 1972, and published its ruling nearly six months later. The death penalty, they wrote, violated the eighth amendment's protection against cruel and unusual punishment, having been applied in "arbitrary or capricious" ways by states. Justices wrote against the death penalty per se, saying it violated "human dignity" and that it had been administered "arbitrarily" or "capriciously" by states. That is, procedures used to determine who received the death penalty were inconsistent and unfair. Violations of the fourteenth amendment's equal treatment protections were cited. Of particular concern was that the sentence was being disproportionately administered to members of socially and economically disadvantaged groups.
This decision did not absolutely reject the death penalty as a punishment for murder. But it did require that the death penalty not be imposed "arbitrarily or capriciously". In other words, states are obligated to define and enforce objective standards that empower judges and juries to use discretion in considering mitigating factors (unique circumstances) for individual defendants. The result was not the elimination of the death penalty among the states. Rather, states revised judicial protocols to ensure that conviction and sentencing of defendants in capital crimes met the Court's standards for consistency and fairness.
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A case brief organizes a judicial opinion into several meaningful components: facts of the case, legal issues involved, court holding, and rationale (the Court's explanation for its decision). In the Gregg v. Georgia case brief, the facts of the case indicate that Troy Leon Gregg was convicted of robbery and murder and sentenced to death. On appeal, the Georgia Supreme Court upheld the death sentence except as it applied to robbery. At issue was the question of whether the death penalty is disallowed by the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments as cruel and unusual punishment. The Supreme Court held by a vote of 7-2 that the death sentence is appropriate in some cases as long as its administration is procedurally sound. The justices upheld Gregg's sentence using the rationale that Georgia's revised death penalty statute specifies a bifurcated process that separates conviction and sentencing, along with consideration of case-specific mitigating or aggravating factors and is thus Constitutionally sound.
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In November of 1974, Troy Leon Gregg committed armed robbery and murder, shooting Fred Edward Simmons and Bob Durwood Moore, who had picked up Gregg and a hitchhiking companion along the Florida Interstate en route to Georgia. The key witness against Gregg, Dennis Weaver, a third passenger in the car, contacted law enforcement upon learning that the bodies of Simmons and Moore had been discovered in a drainage ditch near a busy Atlanta highway. He provided information that Gregg had shared with him about his eventual destination. With this tip, Gregg was apprehended in Asheville, North Carolina three days later. He was convicted by a Georgia jury on November 24, 1974. Gregg appealed his case to the United States Supreme Court, citing the Furman decision. He claimed that the administration of the death penalty in his case was cruel and unusual punishment. The Court heard oral arguments on March 31, 1976, and issued its ruling three months later, on July 2. The justices decided in favor of Georgia and Gregg lost his appeal.
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The 1972 Furman decision brought a moratorium on states' imposition of the death penalty. Subsequently, Georgia revised its penal code in 1973 to include two phases: conviction and sentencing. In the latter phase, aggravating factors (grievous conditions) had to be considered before capital punishment could be imposed. While the Georgia Supreme Court disallowed capital punishment for the armed robbery, it upheld Gregg's death sentence for the murders, appropriately applied, referencing the updated statute in its Gregg v. Georgia ruling.
At the time, 66% of Americans supported capital punishment in murder cases. Justice Potter Stewart's 1972 prediction that the Furman decision would "finish" the death penalty nationwide had been proven wrong. Rather, 35 states, including Georgia, passed rewritten death penalty statutes. In seven states, the death penalty was mandatory in capital cases. Others, like Georgia, adopted two-stage trials that separated conviction and sentencing and required appellate court affirmation before the administration of the death penalty.
Gregg v. Georgia Ruling
Arguing for the State of Georgia was Solicitor General Robert Bork, pitted against Anthony Amsterdam, counsel for Troy Gregg, who had helped to guide the NAACP's trial strategy in the Furman case. Nearly three months after oral arguments were completed, on July 2, 1976, the Supreme Court issued a 7-2 ruling that the death penalty as applied in Gregg's case violated neither the eighth nor the fourteenth Amendments. Gregg's appeal was denied, affirming state statutes.
Gregg v. Georgia Reasoning and Opinion
Concerns about societal acceptance of the death penalty as punishment for murder were, in the Court's majority opinion, unfounded, since most states included the death penalty in their penal codes. The justices carefully weighed personal reservations about capital punishment against increasing public support for its imposition. As Justice Stewart wrote, "punishment of death for the crime of murder does not, under all circumstances, violate the eighth or the fourteenth Amendment" and "in the four years since Furman v. Georgia, at least thirty-five states have enacted new statutes providing for the death penalty." Georgia's statute passed the "arbitrary or capricious" application test, requiring individual consideration of the aggravating and mitigating factors unique to each murder case, bifurcated trials, and appellate review of death sentences.
Gregg v. Georgia Dissent
After hearing oral arguments, Justices Brennan and Marshall vowed to strike down state laws requiring the death penalty for murder as well as those that placed this decision solely in jurors' hands. Chief Justice Warren Burger joined Justices Rehnquist and Blackman in supporting states' revised death penalty statutes. By a 5-4 vote, they nullified mandatory death sentences, writing instead in favor of discretionary application. Justice Marshall, in his dissent, cited insufficient evidence for the claim that the death penalty effectively deters crime. He wrote of his moral opposition to the death penalty, calling it "excessive" and declaring a need for the American public to be better informed about its "shocking, unjust, and unacceptable" nature. Were citizens aware of the finer details, Marshall maintained, they would not remain supportive. Justice Brennan joined Marshall in deeming the death penalty "cruel and unusual punishment that has no place in and is "beyond the pale of" a civilized society."
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The Supreme Court's decision in Gregg v. Georgia resurrected the constitutional viability of states' death penalty laws. The moratorium that had been in place since 1972 was lifted. Precedent had been set. States could retain statutes defining procedures for convicting and sentencing defendants in capital crimes, with added confidence that these laws would pass appellate review. This landmark decision, then, while overturning the practice of standardless, "arbitrary and capricious" death penalty sentences, affirmed capital punishment as an appropriate penalty approved by most Americans. Today, the death penalty remains part of the penal code in twenty-seven states. In most of these, lethal injection is the usual means of execution, with electrocution used primarily in South Carolina alone.
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Hitchhiker Troy Leon Gregg's murder of two men in Georgia in November 1974 resurrected support for the death penalty nationwide. Gregg's conviction and sentencing by a Georgia jury, upheld by the Georgia Supreme Court, would result in the landmark case that tested state death penalty laws revised after the Furman decision in 1972. Gregg's appeal challenged Georgia's 1973 capital punishment statute and his sentencing as violations of the eighth and fourteenth amendments' protections against cruel and unusual punishment, as cited in Furman v. Georgia.
In Gregg v. Georgia (1976), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the death penalty constitutional, as long as it is not administered in an "arbitrary" or "capricious" manner, despite Justice Marshall's dissenting opinion that the death penalty, was, in his view, a violation of the eighth and fourteenth amendments, "excessive," and morally wrong. Were Americans better informed, he wrote, they would agree as to its "shocking, unjust, and unacceptable" nature. Further, Justice Marshall maintained, capital punishment is not an effective deterrent to crime. The majority opinion in Gregg v. Georgia, despite Marshall's dissent, reversed the ban that had resulted from the Court's decision in Furman v. Georgia (1972). With this precedent, states' death penalty statutes, such as Georgia's, which requires bifurcated sentencing and appellate review, remain constitutional. But they must pass muster with regards to a fair and consistent application.
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The Death Penalty Reconsidered: Gregg v. Georgia
In the early 1970's, U.S. states were required to add statutes and limitations on the application of the death penalty following the landmark court case of Furman v. Georgia. Once these were in place, many convicts who were sentenced to death under the new guidelines pressed the United States Supreme Court to reconsider its standing on the death penalty. The court, in Gregg v. Georgia, upheld the legality of the death penalty; however, as we will see, not everyone agreed with the court's findings.
The Case of Troy Gregg
Troy Gregg killed and robbed two men in cold blood by the side of the road and dumped their bodies in a trench. When Gregg was caught, he claimed the acts had been in self-defense, but it soon became clear that his version of the story was deceptive, and he was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. Gregg's sentence was one of the first to follow the guidelines that each state created after the Supreme Court's ruling in Furman v. Georgia, which found that the death penalty should not be applied arbitrarily. Gregg's attorneys argued that the sentencing of the death penalty in his case did not meet that requirement and again pushed to have the death sentence overturned on the grounds that it was cruel and unusual punishment.
Gregg v. Georgia: Ruling
In 1972 in Furman v. Georgia, the courts made a major shift in thinking about the death penalty, ruling that its application outside of narrow and specific circumstances was 'cruel and unusual punishment'. This ruling required states to create new statutes to specify when the death penalty could be applied, to prevent it from being applied arbitrarily or irrationally. This marked a small victory for anti-death penalty advocates, and in the case of Gregg v. Georgia they appealed to the court to find the death penalty unconstitutional.
In Gregg v. Georgia, the Supreme Court found that the death penalty was constitutional so long as there was a system in place to prevent arbitrary and capricious application and that Georgia's statues were sufficient to prevent this. The court ensured that the death penalty was not a mandatory sentence, that it was applied in cases where there were relevant aggravating circumstances, and that there was a way to review the sentence to ensure it was not made on poor grounds. Georgia's statutes made sure that the penalty was applied in limited cases so it was not an unusual punishment and that the factors of the crime considered at sentencing prevented it from being applied cruelly.
Justice Marshall Dissents
Thurgood Marshall dissented with the majority in this case and rejected the court's finding of the death penalty as a reasonable consequence for any crime. Marshall argued that the term 'cruel and unusual' is not an appeal to the historical precedent of the death penalty, but to whether civil society would consider the practice to be particularly cruel. In his dissent, he argued that most citizens did not really know how brutal the death penalty was, but that the practice would be considered beyond the pale for civilized society. Marshall's dissent continues to support the case that the death penalty is a practice that has no place in modern times.
Lesson Summary
Troy Gregg killed two men in cold blood and was sentenced to death by the State of Georgia. The case of Gregg v. Georgia was his appeal to the Supreme Court that his death sentence was cruel and unusual. The Gregg v. Georgia case is historically and legally significant because it upheld the legality of the death penalty. Gregg v. Georgia was one of the first cases to challenge the court's decision in Furman v. Georgia, where the courts restricted the application of the death penalty to prevent its use capriciously or arbitrarily.
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