Coker v. Georgia
Encyclopedia
Coker v. Georgia, , held that the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution
forbade the death penalty for the crime of rape
of a woman.
, kidnapping, one count of first degree murder, and aggravated assault, Erlich Anthony Coker escaped from prison. Coker broke into Allen and Elnita Carver's home near Waycross
, Georgia
, raped Elnita Carver 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: that the rape was committed by a person with prior convictions for capital felonies, and that the rape was committed in the course of committing another capital felony—the armed robbery. The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld the sentence.
wrote the plurality opinion
in this case, on behalf of Justices Stewart
, Blackmun
, and Stevens
. The plurality opinion denied that rape causes serious injury: "Although it may be accompanied by another crime, rape by definition does not include the death of or even the serious injury to another person."
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.
Justice Powell concurred in the judgment, but emphasized that the death penalty may be appropriate for rape if there are aggravating circumstances.
, mentally retarded offenders
, juvenile offenders
, and eventually all crimes except murder and crimes against the state
.
The Court's proportionality jurisprudence is informed by objective evidence. This objective evidence comes from the laws enacted by state legislatures and the behavior of sentencing juries
. In 1925, only 18 states authorized the death penalty for rape. In 1971, on the eve of the Court's Furman
decision, only 16 states authorized the death penalty for rape. But when Furman forced the states to rewrite their capital sentencing laws, only three states—Georgia, North Carolina, and Louisiana—retained the death penalty for rape. In 1976, the capital sentencing laws of North Carolina and Louisiana were struck down for a different reason. In response to those reversals, the legislatures of North Carolina and Louisiana did not retain the death penalty for rape. Thus, at the time of the Coker decision, only Georgia retained the death penalty for the crime of rape of an adult woman.
At the time of the Coker decision, the Supreme Court of Georgia had reviewed 63 rape cases. Only six of these involved a death sentence. The Georgia court had set aside one, leaving five death sentences for rape intact from among all the rape convictions obtained since Furman. From this statistical evidence, the Court concluded that in at least 90% of rape cases, the jury did not impose a death sentence. The objective evidence – state death penalty laws and behavior of juries – suggested that the death penalty for rape was rare indeed.
But objective evidence does not dictate the outcome of the Court's proportionality analysis. The Court also brings to bear its estimation of how the death penalty in the circumstances in question would serve the goals of retribution and deterrence. Rape is a serious crime – "short of homicide, it is the ultimate violation of self." It typically involves violence and injury, both physical and psychological, but the Court denied that it involves "serious" injury. "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." In light of these facts, the Court concluded that death was an excessive punishment for "the rapist who, as such, does not take human life."
The fact that the jury had found that two aggravating factors applied to Coker's crime – his prior convictions and the fact that the rape was committed during the course of a robbery – did not change the Court's conclusion. The rape may have been committed during the course of another crime, and by a hardened criminal, but the rape did not escalate into a killing. Finally, even a deliberate killing does not merit a death sentence under Georgia law absent the finding of aggravating factors. These facts bolstered the Court's conclusion that the death penalty was a constitutionally excessive punishment for rape.
, 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—was it proper for Georgia to impose the death penalty on Coker, a man who had escaped from prison while serving a sentence for murder only to rape another young woman? "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 necessarily 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." For Burger, "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." If the Court was serious about sanctioning the continued use of the death penalty, it should allow states to use it in appropriate circumstances.
Furthermore, rape is a heinous crime. "A rapist not only violates a victim's privacy and personal integrity, but inevitably causes serious psychological as well as physical harm in the process. The long-range effect upon the victim's life and health is likely to be irreparable; it is impossible to measure the harm which results." Burger disagreed with the Court's conclusion that there were no circumstances under which it was a proportional response to crime. Such a conclusion turned the Court into "the ultimate arbiter of the standards of criminal responsibility in diverse areas of the criminal law throughout the country." That was an inappropriate role for the Court to assume in the American federal system. Burger felt that Furman had injected enough uncertainty into the debate over capital punishment; it was more expedient to allow subsequent legislative developments to evolve as they may.
Burger also disagreed with the Court's assessment of the retribution and deterrence value of the death penalty for rape. The death penalty might deter at least one prospective rapist. It might encourage victims to report the crime. It might increase the general feeling of security among members of the community. The fact that the magnitude of the harm caused by the murderer is greater than that caused by the rapist was beside the point for Burger. The Eighth Amendment was not the Code of Hammurabi
; if "innocent life and limb are to be preserved I see no constitutional barrier in punishing by death all who engage in...criminal activity which consistently poses serious danger of death or serious bodily harm." Accordingly, Burger argued the Court had no place dictating how the states might make law in the criminal arena.
In 2007 Ehrlich Coker's son Eric Lee Coker was sentenced in North Carolina to at least 21 years for repeatedly molesting a 14-year-old relative and then trying to hire someone to kill his wife .
resulted in Supreme Court litigation that expanded the Coker decision.
On May 22, 2007, the Louisiana Supreme Court held that it is constitutional to impose the death penalty for rape where the rape victim is a child. http://www.cnn.com/2007/LAW/05/23/child.rape.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories Ruling on an appeal brought in the case of defendant Patrick Kennedy, Justice Jeffrey Victory wrote for the court that the Louisiana law allowing the imposition of the death penalty under those circumstances was consistent with Coker because an aggravating circumstance—the age of the victim—justified the death penalty.
The case was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2008 (Kennedy v. Louisiana
), thus expanding Coker to say that the death penalty is unconstitutional in all cases that do not involve murder.
Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution is the part of the United States Bill of Rights which prohibits the federal government from imposing excessive bail, excessive fines or cruel and unusual punishments. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that this amendment's Cruel and Unusual...
forbade the death penalty for the crime of rape
Rape
Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority or with a person who is incapable of valid consent. The...
of a woman.
Facts
While serving several sentences for rapeRape
Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority or with a person who is incapable of valid consent. The...
, kidnapping, one count of first degree murder, and aggravated assault, Erlich Anthony Coker escaped from prison. Coker broke into Allen and Elnita Carver's home near Waycross
Waycross, Georgia
Waycross is the county seat of, and only incorporated city in, Ware County in the U.S. state of Georgia. The population was 14,725 at the 2010 Census. A small portion of the city extends into Pierce County. According the U.S...
, Georgia
Georgia (U.S. state)
Georgia is a state located in the southeastern United States. It was established in 1732, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies. The state is named after King George II of Great Britain. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788...
, raped Elnita Carver 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: that the rape was committed by a person with prior convictions for capital felonies, and that the rape was committed in the course of committing another capital felony—the armed robbery. The Supreme Court of Georgia upheld the sentence.
Decisions
Justice WhiteByron White
Byron Raymond "Whizzer" White won fame both as a football halfback and as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Appointed to the court by President John F. Kennedy in 1962, he served until his retirement in 1993...
wrote the plurality opinion
Plurality opinion
A plurality opinion is the opinion from a group of justices, often in an appellate court, in which no single opinion received the support of a majority of the court. The plurality opinion did not receive the support of more than half the justices, but received more support than any other...
in this case, on behalf of Justices Stewart
Potter Stewart
Potter Stewart was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. During his tenure, he made, among other areas, major contributions to criminal justice reform, civil rights, access to the courts, and Fourth Amendment jurisprudence.-Education:Stewart was born in Jackson, Michigan,...
, Blackmun
Harry Blackmun
Harold Andrew Blackmun was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1970 until 1994. He is best known as the author of Roe v. Wade.- Early years and professional career :...
, and Stevens
John Paul Stevens
John Paul Stevens served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from December 19, 1975 until his retirement on June 29, 2010. At the time of his retirement, he was the oldest member of the Court and the third-longest serving justice in the Court's history...
. The plurality opinion denied that rape causes serious injury: "Although it may be accompanied by another crime, rape by definition does not include the death of or even the serious injury to another person."
Justices Brennan
William J. Brennan, Jr.
William Joseph Brennan, Jr. was an American jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1956 to 1990...
and Marshall
Thurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, serving from October 1967 until October 1991...
concurred in the judgment because the case struck down a death penalty, in keeping with their view that the death penalty is per se
Per se
Per se may refer to:*Per se, a Latin phrase meaning "in itself".*Illegal per se, the legal usage in criminal and anti-trust law*Negligence per se, legal use in tort law*Per Se , a New York City restaurant-See also:...
cruel and unusual punishment.
Justice Powell concurred in the judgment, but emphasized that the death penalty may be appropriate for rape if there are aggravating circumstances.
Consequences
The main consequence of Coker was that the death penalty in the United States was largely restricted to crimes in which the defendant caused the death of another human being. Recently, however, some states are testing the limit of this restriction by enacting death penalty statutes for repeat child rapists. In terms of the Court's capital punishment jurisprudence, Coker signaled the Court's commitment to employing a robust proportionality test for deciding when the death penalty would be an appropriate punishment. The Court would later use this same proportionality test to evaluate the propriety of the death penalty for felony murder (except for the actual killer)Enmund v. Florida
Enmund v. Florida, , is a United States Supreme Court case was a 5-4 decision in which the United States Supreme Court applied its capital proportionality principle to set aside the death penalty for the driver of a getaway car in a robbery-murder of an elderly Florida couple.-Background:While...
, mentally retarded offenders
Atkins v. Virginia
Atkins v. Virginia, , is a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled 6-3 that executing the mentally retarded violates the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishments.-The case:...
, juvenile offenders
Roper v. Simmons
Roper v. Simmons, was a decision in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that it is unconstitutional to impose capital punishment for crimes committed while under the age of 18. The 5-4 decision overruled the Court's prior ruling upholding such sentences on offenders above or at the...
, and eventually all crimes except murder and crimes against the state
Kennedy v. Louisiana
Kennedy v. Louisiana, 554 U.S. 407 was a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that held that the Eighth Amendment's Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause did not permit a state to punish the crime of rape of a child with the death penalty; more broadly, the power of the state...
.
The Court's proportionality jurisprudence is informed by objective evidence. This objective evidence comes from the laws enacted by state legislatures and the behavior of sentencing juries
Jury
A jury is a sworn body of people convened to render an impartial verdict officially submitted to them by a court, or to set a penalty or judgment. Modern juries tend to be found in courts to ascertain the guilt, or lack thereof, in a crime. In Anglophone jurisdictions, the verdict may be guilty,...
. In 1925, only 18 states authorized the death penalty for rape. In 1971, on the eve of the Court's Furman
Furman v. Georgia
Furman v. Georgia, was a United States Supreme Court decision that ruled on the requirement for a degree of consistency in the application of the death penalty. The case led to a de facto moratorium on capital punishment throughout the United States, which came to an end when Gregg v. Georgia was...
decision, only 16 states authorized the death penalty for rape. But when Furman forced the states to rewrite their capital sentencing laws, only three states—Georgia, North Carolina, and Louisiana—retained the death penalty for rape. In 1976, the capital sentencing laws of North Carolina and Louisiana were struck down for a different reason. In response to those reversals, the legislatures of North Carolina and Louisiana did not retain the death penalty for rape. Thus, at the time of the Coker decision, only Georgia retained the death penalty for the crime of rape of an adult woman.
At the time of the Coker decision, the Supreme Court of Georgia had reviewed 63 rape cases. Only six of these involved a death sentence. The Georgia court had set aside one, leaving five death sentences for rape intact from among all the rape convictions obtained since Furman. From this statistical evidence, the Court concluded that in at least 90% of rape cases, the jury did not impose a death sentence. The objective evidence – state death penalty laws and behavior of juries – suggested that the death penalty for rape was rare indeed.
But objective evidence does not dictate the outcome of the Court's proportionality analysis. The Court also brings to bear its estimation of how the death penalty in the circumstances in question would serve the goals of retribution and deterrence. Rape is a serious crime – "short of homicide, it is the ultimate violation of self." It typically involves violence and injury, both physical and psychological, but the Court denied that it involves "serious" injury. "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." In light of these facts, the Court concluded that death was an excessive punishment for "the rapist who, as such, does not take human life."
The fact that the jury had found that two aggravating factors applied to Coker's crime – his prior convictions and the fact that the rape was committed during the course of a robbery – did not change the Court's conclusion. The rape may have been committed during the course of another crime, and by a hardened criminal, but the rape did not escalate into a killing. Finally, even a deliberate killing does not merit a death sentence under Georgia law absent the finding of aggravating factors. These facts bolstered the Court's conclusion that the death penalty was a constitutionally excessive punishment for rape.
The proportionality requirement usurps legislative power
Chief Justice Burger, joined by Justice RehnquistWilliam Rehnquist
William Hubbs Rehnquist was an American lawyer, jurist, and political figure who served as an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States and later as the 16th Chief Justice of the United States...
, 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—was it proper for Georgia to impose the death penalty on Coker, a man who had escaped from prison while serving a sentence for murder only to rape another young woman? "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 necessarily 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." For Burger, "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." If the Court was serious about sanctioning the continued use of the death penalty, it should allow states to use it in appropriate circumstances.
Furthermore, rape is a heinous crime. "A rapist not only violates a victim's privacy and personal integrity, but inevitably causes serious psychological as well as physical harm in the process. The long-range effect upon the victim's life and health is likely to be irreparable; it is impossible to measure the harm which results." Burger disagreed with the Court's conclusion that there were no circumstances under which it was a proportional response to crime. Such a conclusion turned the Court into "the ultimate arbiter of the standards of criminal responsibility in diverse areas of the criminal law throughout the country." That was an inappropriate role for the Court to assume in the American federal system. Burger felt that Furman had injected enough uncertainty into the debate over capital punishment; it was more expedient to allow subsequent legislative developments to evolve as they may.
Burger also disagreed with the Court's assessment of the retribution and deterrence value of the death penalty for rape. The death penalty might deter at least one prospective rapist. It might encourage victims to report the crime. It might increase the general feeling of security among members of the community. The fact that the magnitude of the harm caused by the murderer is greater than that caused by the rapist was beside the point for Burger. The Eighth Amendment was not the Code of Hammurabi
Code of Hammurabi
The Code of Hammurabi is a well-preserved Babylonian law code, dating to ca. 1780 BC . It is one of the oldest deciphered writings of significant length in the world. The sixth Babylonian king, Hammurabi, enacted the code, and partial copies exist on a human-sized stone stele and various clay...
; if "innocent life and limb are to be preserved I see no constitutional barrier in punishing by death all who engage in...criminal activity which consistently poses serious danger of death or serious bodily harm." Accordingly, Burger argued the Court had no place dictating how the states might make law in the criminal arena.
Ehrlich Anthony Coker
Ehrlich (also listed as Ehrlech and, above in this Wikipedia entry, as Erlich) Coker is still serving multiple life sentences as of 2009 at the Phillips State Prison, Georgia.In 2007 Ehrlich Coker's son Eric Lee Coker was sentenced in North Carolina to at least 21 years for repeatedly molesting a 14-year-old relative and then trying to hire someone to kill his wife .
Louisiana Supreme Court decision in Kennedy case
A decision by the Louisiana Supreme CourtLouisiana Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of Louisiana is the highest court and court of last resort in the U.S. state of Louisiana. The modern Supreme Court, composed of seven justices, meets in the French Quarter of New Orleans....
resulted in Supreme Court litigation that expanded the Coker decision.
On May 22, 2007, the Louisiana Supreme Court held that it is constitutional to impose the death penalty for rape where the rape victim is a child. http://www.cnn.com/2007/LAW/05/23/child.rape.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories Ruling on an appeal brought in the case of defendant Patrick Kennedy, Justice Jeffrey Victory wrote for the court that the Louisiana law allowing the imposition of the death penalty under those circumstances was consistent with Coker because an aggravating circumstance—the age of the victim—justified the death penalty.
The case was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2008 (Kennedy v. Louisiana
Kennedy v. Louisiana
Kennedy v. Louisiana, 554 U.S. 407 was a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that held that the Eighth Amendment's Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause did not permit a state to punish the crime of rape of a child with the death penalty; more broadly, the power of the state...
), thus expanding Coker to say that the death penalty is unconstitutional in all cases that do not involve murder.