After reading about the murders of Simmons and Moore, Dennis Weaver communicated with the police and the next morning Gregg and his travel companion were arrested in Simmons car, in Nashville. In their possession was a .25 caliber pistol, which was later found to be the weapon used to kill Simmons and Moore.
Gregg and his companion were charged and convicted of murder and armed robbery.
2.
The Furman case is considered important as it questions the constitutionality of the death penalty as it goes against the Eighth Amendment which states ‘excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted’, and the courts agreed thou not in all circumstances. However the Supreme Court held the penalty should be considered cruel or unusual if it administered arbitrarily or discriminatorily also that punishment by death is not cruel, unless the manner of the execution can be said to be inhumane and barbarous.
3.
In the Furman decision, the Supreme Court took a dramatic reversal and held that the death sentences were unconstitutional as applied and the majority found that the lack of standards for imposing the death penalty enabled the penalty to be selectively applied, allowing arbitrary application. Part of the arbitrariness concern was that the death penalty had been imposed unevenly, infrequently and often selectively against minorities. Under the Eighth Amendment, a punishment is considered unconstitutionally imposed if it administered arbitrarily or discriminatorily.
In Furman the court successfully nullified the existing death penalty statues of 39 states, commuted the sentences of over 600 death row inmates around the country and suspended the death penalty.
However the Furman decision triggered a backlash of state legislation and within months states began enacting new statues that they thought would reduce arbitrariness in capital sentencing. To tackle the unconstitutionality of unguided jury discretion, some states removed all of that discretion by mandating capital punishment for those convicted of capital crimes. However this exercise was also held to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in Woodson v. North Carolina, as it did not allow for considerations of individual differences among defendants. Other states wanted to focus the jury’s discretion by providing sentencing guidelines to direct the jury when deciding whether to impose the death penalty.
Georgia provided bifurcated proceedings, in which guilt and sentencing are determined in separate trails. During the penalty phase the jury must find at least one aggravating circumstance beyond reasonable doubt before considering the evidence and making a decision between life or death. In an effort to safeguard against arbitrary sentencing, Georgia also created specialised appellate review.
4.
Gregg challenged the imposition of the death sentence under the Georgia statute as it is prohibited under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments as a form of cruel and unusual punishment. The statute which was amended following the case of Furman v Georgia as this court was held to be violating the above mentioned amendments as they left juries with untrammelled discretion to impose or withhold the death penalty
5.
The Supreme Court held in a 7 to 2 decision that a punishment of death did not violate the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment which prohibits cruel and unusual punishments under all circumstances; also that it meets contemporary standards of decency which states that you must treat people with dignity, be proportional to the crime and have no unnecessary infliction of pain, and as a consequence reinstating the death penalty in Georgia, Florida and Texas. In extreme criminal cases, such as when a defendant has been convicted of intentionally killing another, the cautious and judicious use of the death penalty may be appropriate if carefully employed. The Georgia Statute which was amended after Furman v. Georgia retains the death penalty for six categories of crime: Murder, kidnapping for ransom or where the victim is harmed, armed robbery, rape, treason and aircraft hijacking. Georgia’s death penalty statutes assure the judicial and careful use of the death penalty by requiring a bifurcated proceeding where the trial and sentencing are conducted individually, specific jury findings as to the severity of the crime and nature of the defendant, and a composition of each capital sentence’s circumstances with similar cases. The jury is also authorised to consider any mitigating or aggravating circumstances before making a recommendation of mercy that is binding on a trial court. These procedures require the jury to take in to account the circumstances of the crime and the criminal before it recommends sentence. No longer can a Georgia jury do as Furman's jury did: reach a finding of the defendant's guilt and then, without guidance or direction, decide whether he should live or die. Instead, the jury's attention is directed to the specific circumstances of the crime. The petitioner also argued that two of the statutory aggravating circumstances were vague and therefore predisposed to contradictory interpretations, therefore creating a sizeable risk of the death penalty being arbitrarily inflicted by Georgia state juries. The Supreme Court of Georgia, however, has demonstrated that the new sentencing procedures do provide guidance to juries.
Furthermore, the court was not prepared to overrule the Georgia legislature’s, finding that capital punishment serves as a useful deterrent to future capital crimes and an appropriate means of social retribution against its most serious offenders when it is not arbitrarily applied. The Supreme Court granted the Gregg’s application for Writ of certiorari and affirmed the conviction and the imposition of the death sentences for murder, however The Supreme Court did lift Gregg’s death sentence for armed robbery on the grounds that a death penalty has rarely been imposed in Georgia for that particular offence and found that the jury had improperly considered the murders as aggravating circumstances for the robberies after having considered the armed robbery as aggravating circumstances for murder.
