<P> Instead of abandoning capital punishment, 37 states enacted new death penalty statutes that attempted to address the concerns of White and Stewart in Furman . Some states responded by enacting mandatory death penalty statutes which prescribed a sentence of death for anyone convicted of certain forms of murder . White had hinted that such a scheme would meet his constitutional concerns in his Furman opinion . Other states adopted "bifurcated" trial and sentencing procedures, with various procedural limitations on the jury's ability to pronounce a death sentence designed to limit juror discretion . </P> <P> On July 2, 1976, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Gregg v. Georgia and upheld 7--2 a Georgia procedure in which the trial of capital crimes was bifurcated into guilt - innocence and sentencing phases . At the first proceeding, the jury decides the defendant's guilt; if the defendant is innocent or otherwise not convicted of first - degree murder, the death penalty will not be imposed . At the second hearing, the jury determines whether certain statutory aggravating factors exist, whether any mitigating factors exist, and, in many jurisdictions, weigh the aggravating and mitigating factors in assessing the ultimate penalty--either death or life in prison, either with or without parole . The same day in Woodson v. North Carolina and Roberts v. Louisiana, the court struck down 5--4 statutes providing a mandatory death sentence . </P> <P> Executions resumed on January 17, 1977, when Gary Gilmore went before a firing squad in Utah . Although hundreds of individuals were sentenced to death in the United States during the 1970s and early 1980s, only ten people besides Gilmore (who had waived all of his appeal rights) were actually executed prior to 1984 . </P> <P> In 1977, the Supreme Court's Coker v. Georgia decision barred the death penalty for rape of an adult woman . Previously, the death penalty for rape of an adult had been gradually phased out in the United States, and at the time of the decision, Georgia and the U.S. Federal government were the only two jurisdictions to still retain the death penalty for that offense . </P>

When was the death penalty reinstated in the us