Gregg V. Georgia

2 Pages 537 Words

Syllabus

Petitioner was charged with committing armed robbery and murder on the basis of evidence that he had killed and robbed two men. At the trial stage of Georgia's bifurcated procedure, the jury found petitioner guilty of two counts of armed robbery and two counts of murder.

At the penalty stage, the judge instructed the jury that it could recommend either a death sentence or a life prison sentence on each count; that it was free to consider mitigating or aggravating circumstances, if any, as presented by the parties; and that it would not be authorized to consider imposing the death sentence unless it first found beyond a reasonable doubt (1) that the murder was committed while the offender was engaged in the commission of other capital felonies, viz., the armed robberies of the victims; (2) that he committed the murder for the purpose of receiving the victims' money and automobile; or (3) that the murder was "outrageously and wantonly vile, horrible and inhuman" in that it "involved the depravity of [the] mind of the defendant."

The jury found the first and second of these aggravating circumstances, and returned a sentence of death. The Georgia Supreme Court affirmed the convictions. After reviewing the trial transcript and record and comparing the evidence and sentence in similar cases, the court upheld the death sentences for the murders, concluding that they had not resulted from prejudice or any other arbitrary factor, and were not excessive or disproportionate to the penalty applied in similar cases, but vacated the armed robbery sentences on the ground, inter alia, that the death penalty had rarely been imposed in Georgia for that offense.

Petitioner challenges imposition of the death sentence under the Georgia statute as "cruel and unusual" punishment under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. That statute, as amended following Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (where this Court held to be violative of those Am...