Research Paper on "Supreme Court Case Coker v. Georgia"

Research Paper 3 pages (1051 words) Sources: 6

[EXCERPT] . . . .

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… READ MORE

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