Coker v. Georgia

Coker v. Georgia, 433 U.S. 584 (1977) was a United States Supreme Court decision which held that the death penalty for rape of an adult was grossly disproportionate and excessive punishment , and therefore unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution .

The Court expanded the ban on death penalty for rape to include rape of a child in the 2008 decision _Kennedy v. Louisiana _.

Contents

• 1 Background

• 2 Case history

• 3 Decision

  • 3.1 Plurality

  • 3.2 Concurring opinion

  • 3.3 Concurring/dissenting

  • 3.4 Dissenting

• 4 Impact

• 5 Subsequent developments

• 6 See also

• 7 Notes

• 8 References

• 9 External links

Background

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In _Gregg v. Georgia _ (1976), the Supreme Court held that the death penalty was not a disproportionate punishment for the crime of murder and was constitutional as long as sentencing was left to the discretion of a jury . Gregg left open the question of the constitutionality of the death penalty for crimes other than murder.

After the Supreme Court overturned _McGautha v. California _ most states were forced to revise their death penalty statutes to comply with _Furman v. Georgia _, and of the 16 states that allowed the death penalty for rape at that time, most chose to leave it out of their new death penalty laws. Even before Furman executions were rare relative to the number of rapes that occurred, and white men convicted of rape were rarely executed. At the time of the Coker decision, Georgia was the only state that allowed death penalty for the crime of raping an adult.

Case history

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While serving several sentences for rape , kidnapping , one count of first degree murder , and aggravated assault , Ehrlich Anthony Coker escaped from prison. He broke into Allen and Elnita Carver's home near Waycross , Georgia ; raped 16 year old Elnita Carver in front of her husband, and stole the family's vehicle. Coker was convicted of rape, armed robbery , and the other offenses.

He was sentenced to death on the rape charge after the jury found two of the aggravating circumstances present for imposing such a sentence: the rape was committed by a person with prior convictions for capital felonies , and the rape was committed in the course of committing another capital felony, the armed robbery. The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld the death sentence.

Decision

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Justice White wrote the plurality opinion , on behalf of Justices Stewart , Blackmun , and Stevens .

Plurality

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Justice Byron White

The plurality held that death was an unconstitutionally excessive punishment for the crime of raping an adult:

We have the abiding conviction that the death penalty, which is unique in its severity and irrevocability, is an excessive penalty for the rapist who, as such, does not take human life.

The Court said that a punishment was excessive in violation of the Eighth Amendment if it was disproportionate to the severity of the crime or did not serve a meaningful penological purpose such as deterrence .

Coker was the first Supreme Court decision to categorically restrict the death penalty for non-homicide crimes.

The Court acknowledged that rape was a serious crime "very often accompanied by physical injury to the female and can also inflict mental and psychological damage. Because it undermines the community's sense of security, there is public injury as well." The Court said rape, the "ultimate violation of self", was second only to murder in severity. However, they drew a sharp distinction between rape and murder: "Life is over for the victim of the murderer; for the rape victim, life may not be nearly so happy as it was, but it is not over and normally is not beyond repair."

The court ultimately concluded that, "Rape is without doubt deserving of serious punishment; but in terms of moral depravity and of the injury to the person and to the public, it does not compare with murder, which does involve the unjustified taking of human life."

Concurring opinion

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Justices Brennan

and Marshall

concurred in the judgment because the case struck down a death penalty, in keeping with their view that the death penalty is _per se _ cruel and unusual punishment.

Concurring/dissenting

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Justice Powell

concurred in the judgment, but he emphasized that the death penalty may be appropriate for rape if there are aggravating circumstances. He said the plurality opinion was "so sweeping as to foreclose each of the 50 state legislatures from creating a narrowly defined crime of aggravated rape".

Dissenting

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Chief Justice Burger , joined by Justice Rehnquist dissented because he believed that the proportionality principle the Court had engrafted onto the Eighth Amendment encroached too much on the legislative power of the states.

Burger preferred to concentrate on the narrow facts of the case: Coker had raped three women, and killed one. He said making the penalty more severe than the criminal act was constitutionally permissible if the legislative purpose was deterrence:

"Whatever one's view may be as to the State's constitutional power to impose the death penalty upon a rapist who stands before the court convicted for the first time, this case reveals a chronic rapist whose continuing danger to the community is abundantly clear."

Burger defended a state's prerogative to impose additional punishment for recidivists, including a death sentence for prisoners who commit crimes. Congress had enacted an early three-strikes law , and the federal crime of assault on a mail carrier carried a stiffer penalty for a second such offense. Other states also carried harsher penalties for "habitual criminality." He believed that "the Eighth Amendment does not prevent the State from taking an individual's 'well-demonstrated propensity for life-endangering behavior' into account in devising punitive measures which will prevent inflicting further harm upon innocent victims."

He wrote that if the Court was serious about sanctioning the continued use of the death penalt

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