Corker V. Georgia Case Summary

The Eight Amendment entails that every penalty inflicted by the government be in proportion with the crime entrusted by the defendant. Penalties that are unreasonably inconsiderate will be turned over on petition. For instance, punishments that have been turned over for being irrational are two Georgia (Coker v. Georgia, and Eberheart v. Georgia) decrees that ordered the death penalty for rape and kidnapping. According to the Supreme Court, the Eighth Amendment prohibits some penalties completely, and prohibits some other penalties that are extreme when evaluated to the offense, or to the capability of the performer. The U.S. Supreme Court interpretation of the

“Rape is unique. No other violent crime is so fraught with controversy, so enmeshed in dispute and in the politics of gender and sexuality… And within the domain of rape, the most highly charged area of debate concerns the issue of false allegations. For centuries, it has been asserted and assumed that women “cry rape,” that a large proportion of rape allegations are maliciously concocted for purposes of revenge or other motives.”

Capital punishment and the practice of the death penalty is an issue that is passionately debated in the United States. Opponents of the death penalty claim that capital punishment is unnecessary since a life sentence accomplishes the same objective. What death penalty opponents neglect to tell you is that convicted murders and child rapists escape from prison every year(List of prison escapes, 2015). As I write this essay, police are searching for two convicted murders who escaped from the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York on June 6th, 2015. The ONLY punishment from which one cannot escape is the death penalty.

The Court held that the murderer kills; the rapist does not. Life is over for the victim of the murderers but not for the rape victim. The rape victim’s life may not be as happy as it was, but it is not over and in most cases, is not beyond repair. With this, you would think that the Court finds that it is in violation of the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment by imposing the death sentence for the crime of rape.

Twenty-eight states fall under the category of “true non-consent states”, where the prosecution is not required to show that the offender used “force or threats of force against the victim”, and the defendant can be convicted of a sex offense by showing that the victim did not consent (Decker, 2011). While the majority fall under the first category, nine states can be identified as “contradictory non-consent states”, where the prosecution must prove either “the use of forcible compulsion or a victim’s incapacity to consent”; according to Decker, “requiring force or a lack of capacity to consent” completely counteracts the point of having a non-consent provision (Decker, 2011). The third category, “force states”, includes states that do not have non-consent sex offenses. Although the initial impression is that the majority of states have adopted non-consent standards, it is misleading because the number of states that are true to that definition shrinks as the statutes are examined more concisely (Decker, 2011). With that being said, in addition to defining consent and force, the concept of “rape” has also been clarified and developed.

Going against the Supreme Court, which is the supreme law of the land, in the Worcester vs Georgia case demonstrates how Andrew Jackson abused his power as president. John Marshall, the chief justice at the time, ruled that the United States did not have possession or legal jurisdiction over Native American land, and no individual states had authority in Native American affairs. However, Jackson went above this, since the court did not order marshals to enforce it. In the Indian Removal packet, it was stated that in May 1830, Jackson signed the Indian removal act to exchange land with Native Americans. To do this, he coerced tribe leaders, sometimes by getting them drunk or high, into signing away their land through removal treaties. In the

The moral and ethical debate on the sentencing and enforcement of capital punishment has long baffled the citizens and governing powers of the United States. Throughout time, the interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, and the vast majority beliefs of Americans, have been in a constant state of perplexity. Before the 1960s, the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution were interpreted as permitting the death penalty. However, in the early 1960s, it was suggested that the death penalty was a "cruel and unusual" punishment and therefore unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment. Many argue that capital punishment is an absolute necessity, in order to deter crime, and to ‘make things right’ following a heinous crime of murder. Despite the belief that capital punishment may seem to be the only tangible, permanent solution to ending future capital offenses, the United States should remove this cruel and unnecessary form of punishment from our current judicial systems.

Furman v. Georgia was a murder was committed at August 11, 1967. Mr. William Henry Furman was a poor man that dropped out of school at the sixth grade. He was a 26 year old man without a job living on the streets with the intent of commenting theft. The suspect came into the home of and William Micke in Savanah, Georgia, and started to break everything looking for valuables to steal. While rummaging through the house William Micke surprised Furman and he took off running. While attempting to escape the house he accidently (according to him) dropped the gun and killed the unknown house owner.

Facts: In 1974, Ehlich Anthony Coker, who was serving a number of sentences for murder, rape, kidnapping, and assault, escaped from prison. He broke into Allen and Elnita Carver’s home, raped and kidnapped the woman, and stole their car. Coker was convicted of rape, armed robbery, and the other offenses. The Georgia courts sentenced him the death penalty.

Payne was tried and convicted by the Tennessee Trial Court by a jury on two counts of first-degree murder and on one count of assault with intent to murder in the first degree. Payne was then sentenced to death for both murders and 30 years in prison for the assault. Payne appealed to the Tennessee Supreme Court asserting that Mary Zvolanek’s testimony was “irrelevant,” and that her testimony violated his rights guaranteed by the 8th amendment as was applied in the cases of Booth. V. Maryland, 482 U.S. 496 (1987), and South Carolina v. Gathers, 490 U.S. 805 (1989); however, the court concluded that Zvolanek’s testimony was “harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.” Following the Court’s decision, Payne appealed to the United States Supreme Court who heard his case.

This criminal code is one of the most sophisticated in the country and has become a model for other states to follow. But research studies conducted to compare effects of the death penalty nationwide have shown some conflicting results. Comparison studies done to show homicide rates of retentionist and abolitionist jurisdictions from 1999 to 2001 (Sorenson & Pilgrim) have shown that death penalty states tend to have a higher murder rate than abolitionist states. This result creates the argument of the overall deterrent effect of execution. Texas is still in the top 20 of states with the highest homicide rate even though it is the highest in death penalty executions. “If the death penalty were a deterrent, the argument goes, then Texas should be located among those states with the lowest homicide rates” (Sorenson & Pilgrim, P. 25).

Rule 412 which is the state of Tennessee’s version of the rape shield law, is designed to protect the victims of rapes and sexual assaults. The protection offered by laws of this nature was to prevent the victims of these heinous assaults from being re-traumatized on the witness stand during cross examination from the alleged perpetrators (Brody & Acker, 2010). Although I am an avid supporter of the right to a fair trial, I feel compelled to be the voice for those who are often subjected to constant criticism from fellow peers, courts, news and now social media. Rule 412, although sound in premise behind its development, lacks concession with the changing times. There are far too many loopholes in our own rape shield law which begs the question if other state’s rape shield laws truly offer the protection that they were designed to employ. Capers (2013, p. 827) reports that the ongoing issue with rape victims today is the fear of having their past history put on trial and not the event that took place. It was because of this, that many rapes go unreported. In the early 70’s, legislatures and courts began to rethink allowing an alleged victim’s past sexual history admissible in court. This prompted questions as to whether that prior information was actually useful in a current case. The second question that arose was to whether the courts were actually trying the victim during the trial rather than the alleged perpetrator. This is how rape shield laws came about. Then,

Following a bench trial in the Circuit Court for Wicomico County in 2009, Appellant, Patrick Quesenberry (“Quesenberry”), was convicted of two counts of first-degree burglary, one count of attempted first-degree rape, one count of attempted first-degree sex offense, one count of third-degree sex offense, and one count of second-degree assault. For his offenses, the court sentenced Quesenberry to a term of ten years’ imprisonment for each burglary offense, a term of life imprisonment for attempted rape, a term of life imprisonment for attempted sex offense, a term of five years’ imprisonment for third-degree sex offense, and a term of five years’ imprisonment for second-degree assault.

This case was one of the most talked about case since it touched on the eighth and the tenth constitutional amendments at the same time. This was a case that had a long running course of trial and at last a Louisiana convicted Patrick Kennedy as being guilty of raping an eight year old stepdaughter. The rape caused gross damage to the vaginal section, the cervix and the anal parts of the little girl. According to the Louisiana laws, there is a provision for death penalty in the event that a person rapes a child below 12 years of age. This was exactly the sentence that the prosecutor sought in this case and the jury handed down exactly that penalty (Oyez Inc., 2011). However, Kennedy appealed and this is where the greater interest lies.

Apart from these general rules, sentencing rape offenders involves a few additional considerations. The need for imposing restrictions on the discretionary powers of a judge while sentencing a sex offender has already been explained. In light of this, the following section attempts to extend certain recommendations for a uniform sentencing