Capital punishment in the United States
However, by early 1975, thirty states had passed new death penalty laws that they thought would satisfy the Supreme Court.  They did.  In Gregg v. Georgia (1976), the Supreme Court ruled that Georgia's new death penalty law was constitutional.  It ruled that capital punishment was not always cruel and unusual punishment, as long as it was done fairly.  This meant that states could start executing people again, as long as they had rewritten their death penalty laws like Georgia did, to say that the death penalty would be applied fairly.  In 1977, executions began again in the United States.