In Coker v. Georgia, 433 U.S. 584 (1977), the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Eighth Amendment prohibited applying the death penalty for the crime of rape. This decision agreed with a lower court ruling by the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit nearly a decade earlier in Ralph v. Warden, 438 F.2d 786 (4th Cir. 1970). Chief Justice Warren Burger and Justice William Rehnquist dissented, and Justice Lewis Powell dissented in part.