Coker v. Georgia Supreme Court case

Supreme Court Case:

According to the United States Constitution, any state legislature or Congress may prescribe capital punishment or the death penalty for capital offenses or murder. This is especially because the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that this form of punishment is not necessarily an infringement of the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on unusual and cruel punishment. Actually, the Amendment shapes some procedural aspects about when a jury may use this form of punishment and how it must be conducted. The Eighth Amendment is applicable against the federal and state government due to the due process clause in the Fourteenth Amendment.

Constitutional Requirements under Which a Criminal can receive Death Penalty:

Currently, thirty-eight states and federal government enforce the death penalty or capital punishment, which is usually reserved for offenders involved in first-degree murder under aggravating situations ("Types of Sentences," n.d.). However, defendants convicted of capital crimes have the right to present mitigating conditions to the sentencing authority to ensure that only those criminals deserving to die for their offenses receive capital punishment. In the same manner, these defendants have the right to be free from the subjective and impulsive enforcement of death penalty as a punishment.

In order to prevent the subjective application of capital punishment, the death-penalty statutes consists of various safeguards, especially constitutional requirements under which a criminal can receive capital punishment. One of these requirements as determined by the U.S. Supreme Court is that the penalty must be proportional to the offense ("Death Penalty -- an Overview," 2010). The other aspects are a consideration of the criminal's gravity and the severity of the punishment, an examination of how the jurisdiction punishes other offenders, and an analysis of how other jurisdiction punish similar offenses. In order to enforce a death penalty sentence, the jury must be guided by the specific circumstances of the offender and the court needs to have carried out an individualized sentencing process. The other constitutional requirement is the need of finding of aggravating factors in which the sentence enforced becomes unconstitutional unless some aggravating factors that incorporates similar facts and circumstances are identified by the jury.

As the worst form of punishment for offenses, the death penalty should be reserved for the worst and most outrageous offense of all such as worst murders. If murder and torment are critical factors that qualify a criminal for the death penalty, these sentence should be enforced to child rapists and those who injures a victim to an extent that the victim is incapacitated for life. This is mainly because the horrific world of child rape causes the victims and many survivors to bear grievous scars, especially emotional torment. Generally, child rape may provide a stronger and severe emotional case for capital punishment as compared to the normal murder cases (Berman & Bibas, 2008). Similarly, the punishment should also be imposed on offenders who cause injuries to victims to an extent that the victim is incapacitated for life because of torment while it should not be enforced on those who make victims to commit murder.

Coker v. Georgia:

The Coker v. Georgia Case in 1977 remains to be one of the landmark cases in the history of the United States in which the Supreme Court ruled that a state cannot apply capital punishment or crime of raping an adult woman primarily because it violates proportionality requirement. While the decision has hung over states as one national standard, it infringes the essential principles of federalism and separation of powers that are rooted in the country's constitutional system (Silversten, 2011).

During the time that the Supreme Court made this ruling, the state of Georgia basically had the same position on punishment for the crime of rape with many states. Actually, very few states permitted the executions or enforcement of capital punishment for convicted rapists. Similar to many of the states, Georgia did not permit the execution of individuals convicted of rape mainly because of the constitutional requirement of proportionality. However, the Supreme Court made its ruling and conclusion through considering the objective indicia of the country's attitude toward capital punishment in rape cases. Nonetheless, this cannot be justified under the Constitution because the Supreme Court could have simply left the decision in place and restricted itself to analyzing the concerns and questions that were unexplored (Colb, 2003).

In making its ruling, the Supreme Court reversed the decision by Georgia's lower courts to give Coker the death penalty. As previously mentioned, the Supreme Court reversed the decision by Georgia's lower courts because it was considering the attitude of the nation toward death penalty in rape cases. While the reason for the Supreme Court's decision is justified, the ruling has attracted huge debates and concerns in favor and against the decision.

Based on the constitutional requirement of proportionally, I don't agree with the Supreme Court's decision since it's arbitrary. This decision results in the treatment of child rape as qualitatively more heinous than that of an adult woman for the purposes of capital punishment (Adam, 2008). One of the major concerns about the decision is that it specifically considers the rape of adult women but does not effectively address the rape of adults in general.