Coker v. Georgia

Coker v. Georgia
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued March 28, 1977 Decided June 29, 1977
Full case name	Erlich Anthony Coker v. State of Georgia
Citations	433 U.S. 584 (more) 97 S. Ct. 2861; 53 L. Ed. 2d 982; 1977 U.S. LEXIS 146
Case history
Prior	After he escaped from prison, the defendant raped an adult woman. He was convicted and sentenced to death, which was affirmed by the Supreme Court of Georgia, Coker v. State, 234 Ga. 555, 216 S.E.2d 782 (1975); cert. granted, 429 U.S. 815 (1976).
Holding
The death penalty for the rape of an adult is grossly disproportionate and excessive punishment and so is forbidden by the Eighth Amendment, as cruel and unusual punishment.
Court membership
Chief Justice Warren E. Burger Associate Justices William J. Brennan Jr. · Potter Stewart Byron White · Thurgood Marshall Harry Blackmun · Lewis F. Powell Jr. William Rehnquist · John P. Stevens
Case opinions
Plurality	White, joined by Stewart, Blackmun, Stevens
Concurrence	Brennan
Concurrence	Marshall
Concur/dissent	Powell
Dissent	Burger, joined by Rehnquist
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amends. VIII, XIV

Coker v. Georgia, 433 U.S. 584 (1977), 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.^[1]

The "evolving standards of decency" test has since been applied in other cases including Atkins v. Virginia (overturning Penry v. Lynaugh) Stanford v. Kentucky, and Roper v. Simmons.^[2]

Because only a few states continued to have child rape statutes that authorized the death penalty, the Court applied the "evolving standards of decency" review in Kennedy v. Louisiana (2008) to expand Coker, ruling that the death penalty is unconstitutional for the rape of a child where there was no intention to kill the child.