 White accepted the position that the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution required that all punishments be "proportional" to the crime; thus, in "Coker v. Georgia" (1977), he wrote the opinion that invalidated the death penalty for rape of a 16-year-old married girl.His first reported Supreme Court decision was a dissent in "Robinson v. California" (1962), in which he criticized the Court for extending the reach of the Eighth Amendment.In "Robinson" the Court for the first time expanded the constitutional prohibition of "cruel and unusual punishments" from examining the nature of the punishment imposed and whether it was an uncommon punishment − as, for example, in the cases of flogging, branding, banishment, or electrocution − to deciding whether any punishment at all was appropriate for the defendant's conduct.