Ehrlich Anthony Coker Case

In 1974 Ehrlich Anthony Coker was sentenced to multiple life sentences in a Georgia prison for rape, murder, and the kidnapping of a teenage girl. On September of the same year, Coker escapes and forced his way into the residence of Carvers near Waycross, Ga. Entering the residence through an unlocked door Coker tied up Allen(the husband) and sexually assaulted his wife Elnita. Then threaten Allen’s life and abducted Elnita and took their vehicle but was later caught by police.

As a result, Coker was charged with rape, armed robbery, motor vehicle theft, and escape. Coker was trialed and found guilty of all charges and sentenced to death. The reasoning why the death penalty ( under Georgia’s State Law) was applied because of the aggravating

Supreme Court heard and ruled 7 to 2 decision it was unconstitutional to impose a death punishment on someone for rape. The court reasoned that punishments violate the Eighth Amendment of the are “excessive in relation to the crime committed”, that determination about excessiveness are properly informed by the “country’s present Judgement” and that the Georgia law could not survive this type of inquiry because no other state subjected persons convicted of the rape of an adult woman to execution. Moreover the Court explained the Eighth Amendment bars not only those punishments that are “barbaric” but also those that are “excessive” and unconstitutional if it makes no measurable contribution to acceptable goals of punishment and hence is nothing more than the purposeless and needless imposition of pain and suffering, or is grossly out of proportion to the severity of the crime (pp. 433 U.S. 591-592). ‘The death is disproportionate penalty for rape is strongly indicated by the objective evidence of present public judgement, as represented by the attitude of state legislatures and sentencing juries, concerning the acceptability of such a penalty, it only State authorizing the death sentence, it appearing that Georgia is currently the only state authorizing the death sentence for rape of an adult woman, that it is authorized for rape in only two other states, but only when the victim is a child, and that in vast majority of rape convictions in Georgia

Supreme Court has redefined (along with not defining) the Eighth Amendment and “Cruel and Unusual Punishment”. Moreover, the court has intervened in many cases where the death penalty was applied injustice. The Cruel and unusual punishment doctrine has not been well developed. The Supreme Court’s primary concentration has been on the word “cruel” when determining what punishments are prohibited. But the attempts at a definition for “unusual” has led to a number of diverse interpretation. For instance, “unusual” signifies something different from that which generally done; penalties are unusual if they are imposed rarely; innovative punishments are not unusual if they are no more cruel than those which supersede them, and all extreme and barbarous penalties are unusual regardless of how infrequently they are imposed. Thus, the Supreme Court although ruling many times on “cruel and unusual” punishments they have yet to developed no comprehensive theory in regards to the Eighth Amendment. Therefore, the Supreme Court use four characteristic to rule on these cases: the punishment must not be inherently cruel; it must not be disproportionate to the offense charged; it must not be an affront to the concept of human dignity; and any definition of “cruel and unusual” must comport with the Court’s conception of public opinion regarding