This is because of the Respawn timeout value which is 5 secs by default.
The work around is to comment out the COUCHDB_RESPAWN_TIMEOUT=5
from the file
/usr/local/etc/default/couchdb
after this kill any instances of the couchdb by doing
ps -ef | grep couchdb
Then do regular start of couch db using sudo /etc/init.d/couchdb start
and stop using sudo /etc/init.d/couchdb stop
this time couchdb should start and stop as expected.
Make a note this is for version 1.5.1 downloaded from the couchdb official site and if the instructions in the page http://asaf.github.io/blog/2013/07/08/installing-couch-db-on-amazon-ami/
are followed for installation.