Sunday, February 14, 2016

JUSTICE: A footnote to constitional law

The two-volume Constitutional Law book I'm been editing has, much to my surprise, been fascinating. (Several lawyer friends have said "Con Law" was by far their favorite class in law school.)
A recent section about the death penalty mentioned the case of Troy Leon Gregg, a convicted double murderer who broke out of Georgia State Prison the night before his scheduled execution in 1980, and then was promptly beaten to death in a bar fight by two of his fellow escapees.
Gregg's death sentence was the first one upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court after the justices, in Furman v. Georgia, decided that the death penalty was unconstitutional as currently applied.
According to Wikipedia, Gregg and three fellow inmates, "dressed in homemade correctional officer uniforms, complete with fake badges, had sawed through their cells' bars and then left in a car parked in the visitors' parking lot by an aunt of one of them. Gregg was beaten to death later that night in a bar fight in North Carolina. The other escapees were captured three days later."

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