Coker v. Georgia

The Supreme Court ruled on 29 June 1977, that Georgia's death penalty for rape was unconstitutional. Justice White, in a plurality opinion joined by Justices Blackmun, Stevens, and Stewart, ruled that the death penalty for deliberate murder was neither too severe nor "grossly disproportionate to the crime."

However, noting that the Court had "reserved the question of the constitutionality of the death penalty when imposed for other crimes," White turned to the case at hand and wrote: "We have concluded that a sentence of death is grossly disproportionate and excessive punishment for the crime of rape and is therefore forbidden by the Eighth Amendment as cruel and unusual punishment."

He elaborated that while the crime of rape was serious, reprehensible in a moral sense, and showing "almost total contempt for the personal integrity and autonomy of the female victim," still "it does not compare with murder, which does involve the unjustified taking of human life."

He continued, "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 . . . Life is over for the victim of the murderer; for the rape victim, life may not be nearly so happy as it was, it is not over and normally is not beyond repair." Therefore, "the death penalty . . . is excessive for the rapist who, as such, does not take human life."

Justices Brennan and Marshall, in separate concurring opinions, concluded that the death penalty was cruel and unusual punishment prohibited in all cases. Justice Powell agreed that the death penalty was a disproportionate punishment in Coker's case, since the victim did not suffer a serious nor lasting injury. He dissented, however, from the view that a death penalty would be unconstitutional in "the case of an outrageous rape resulting in serious, lasting harm for the victim," a question he said he "would not prejudge."