July 2, 2006 will mark the 30th anniver­sary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s deci­sion in Gregg v. Georgia, an his­toric rul­ing that upheld new­ly craft­ed death penal­ty statutes and sig­naled the begin­ning of the mod­ern era of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. This mile­stone presents the pub­lic with an oppor­tu­ni­ty to exam­ine the appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty over the past three decades and to test whether the Court’s expec­ta­tion of a fair­er and less arbi­trary sys­tem of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment has been ful­filled. As this anniver­sary approach­es, DPIC has com­piled a set of resources relat­ed to this event, includ­ing a time­line of sig­nif­i­cant death penal­ty events over the past 30 years and a fact sheet on arbi­trari­ness and the death penal­ty. The fol­low­ing resources are avail­able in PDF format:

See also, U.S. Supreme Court, Arbitrariness, and Resources.

Citation Guide