SCotUS Rules: Death Penalty Barred for Child Rape

[ChamberedRound]

Split the court right down party lines, and IMHO is a travesty. It's OK for a bank security guard to kill someone to protect the bank's money, but we can't kill scum that rape a child. Summary from www.scotusblog.com:

http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/death-p...or-child-rape/

Death penalty barred for child rape
Wednesday, June 25th, 2008 10:11 am | Lyle Denniston | Print This Post

Barring the death penalty for any crime that does not take the life of the victim, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that it is unconstitutional to impose the death penalty for the crime of raping a child. If the victim does not die or death was not intended, capital punishment for that crime violates the Eighth Amendment, the Court ruled in an opinion by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. The case was Patrick Kennedy v. Louisiana (07-343). The broad declaration that death sentences should be reserved “for crimes that take the life of the victim” will apply, the Court said, to crimes against individuals — thus leaving intact, for example, a death sentence for treason.

The decision split the Court 5-4. The decision nullified a Louisiana law that provided capital punishment for raping a child under age 12. The law was since amended to apply to raping a child under age 13.

[VMJade]

Damned shame, isn't it?

Then again, this is coming from a court that also requires us to treat non-citizens enemy combatants with the same kid gloves we use for citizens.

[Sarcasm]
Oh well, I never really liked the idea of a secure nation anyway.
[/Sarcasm]

[RandomTask]

I don't believe in capital punishment for that offense.
Rather, the perp should be sodomized and emasculated in the public square. Seriously.

[VMJade]

That's an interesting view of it, though I wonder if we can't come together with a compromise- do that, and then shoot them a few days later?

[ChamberedRound]

Originally Posted by RandomTask

I don't believe in capital punishment for that offense.
Rather, the perp should be sodomized and emasculated in the public square. Seriously.

Such "eye for an eye" punishment has been debated ad nauseum elsewhere on the site, so I'll speak my piece on this issue and move on.

I have to disagree with you on this. Punishment as you describe above still leaves us with a deviant that society has to deal with, and IMHO makes us no better than him by torturing him in the same way he did his victim. I say kill such offenders and be done with it. We'd have much smaller and cheaper jails to run, and we wouldn't have to sacrifice our own morals and humanity in the process.

Hence why I disagree with the SCotUS ruling.

[rev214]

Originally Posted by RandomTask

I don't believe in capital punishment for that offense.
Rather, the perp should be sodomized and emasculated in the public square. Seriously.

I'll predict that the punishment recommended above will be taken care of by his new inmate buddies in the first few weeks of his incarceration...and then "daily swallow-up visits" for the rest of his existence...

[awkx]

I believe the Court erred in its decision. Based on the facts of the case, I think the death penalty would have been proportionate punishment to the perpetrator's offense:

Petitioner’s crime was one that cannot be recounted in
these pages in a way sufficient to capture in full the hurt
and horror inflicted on his victim or to convey the revulsion
society, and the jury that represents it, sought to
express by sentencing petitioner to death. At 9:18 a.m. on
March 2, 1998, petitioner called 911 to report that his
stepdaughter, referred to here as L. H., had been raped.
He told the 911 operator that L. H. had been in the garage
while he readied his son for school. Upon hearing loud
screaming, petitioner said, he ran outside and found L. H.
in the side yard. Two neighborhood boys, petitioner told
the operator, had dragged L. H. from the garage to the
yard, pushed her down, and raped her. Petitioner claimed
he saw one of the boys riding away on a blue 10-speed
bicycle.

When police arrived at petitioner’s home between 9:20
and 9:30 a.m., they found L. H. on her bed, wearing a
T-shirt and wrapped in a bloody blanket. She was bleeding
profusely from the vaginal area. Petitioner told police
he had carried her from the yard to the bathtub and then
to the bed. Consistent with this explanation, police found
a thin line of blood drops in the garage on the way to the
house and then up the stairs. Once in the bedroom, petitioner
had used a basin of water and a cloth to wipe blood
from the victim. This later prevented medical personnel
from collecting a reliable DNA sample.

L. H. was transported to the Children’s Hospital. An
expert in pediatric forensic medicine testified that L. H.’s
injuries were the most severe he had seen from a sexual
assault in his four years of practice. A laceration to the
left wall of the vagina had separated her cervix from the
back of her vagina, causing her rectum to protrude into
the vaginal structure. Her entire perineum was torn from
the posterior fourchette to the anus. The injuries required
emergency surgery.

...

Eight days after the crime, and despite L. H.’s insistence
that petitioner was not the offender, petitioner was arrested
for the rape. The State’s investigation had drawn
the accuracy of petitioner and L. H.’s story into question.
Though the defense at trial proffered alternative explanations,
the case for the prosecution, credited by the jury,
was based upon the following evidence: An inspection of
the side yard immediately after the assault was inconsistent
with a rape having occurred there, the grass having
been found mostly undisturbed but for a small patch of
coagulated blood. Petitioner said that one of the perpetrators
fled the crime scene on a blue 10-speed bicycle but
gave inconsistent descriptions of the bicycle’s features,
such as its handlebars. Investigators found a bicycle
matching petitioner and L. H.’s description in tall grass
behind a nearby apartment, and petitioner identified it as
the bicycle one of the perpetrators was riding. Yet its tires
were flat, it did not have gears, and it was covered in
spider webs. In addition police found blood on the underside
of L. H.’s mattress. This convinced them the rape
took place in her bedroom, not outside the house.

Police also found that petitioner made two telephone
calls on the morning of the rape. Sometime before 6:15
a.m., petitioner called his employer and left a message
that he was unavailable to work that day. Petitioner
called back between 6:30 and 7:30 a.m. to ask a colleague
how to get blood out of a white carpet because his daughter
had “ ‘just become a young lady.’ ” Brief for Respondent
12. At 7:37 a.m., petitioner called B & B Carpet Cleaning
and requested urgent assistance in removing bloodstains
from a carpet. Petitioner did not call 911 until about an
hour and a half later.

[awkx]

Originally Posted by ChamberedRound

It's OK for a bank security guard to kill someone to protect the bank's money, but we can't kill scum that rape a child.

Hmm.... I don't think that analogy is entirely apt. A bank guard may kill a robber in self-defense or maybe even to stop a felony. But the robber can't be put to death after the fact as punishment. Likewise, one may lawfully kill a rapist to prevent a rape or to stop a rape in progress, but, according to Supreme Court, the gov't can't put a rapist to death as punishment after the fact. The distinction is whether is the killing is done to (1) stop a crime, or (2) punish the perpetrator afterwards.

But I agree with you that the death penalty would be appropriate in this case, and that the Supreme Court interpreted the 8th Amendment wrongly in this case.

[Pector55]

This is one of the biggest problems with our society. There are those who find some bizarre value in arguing on behalf of the bad people while trampling the rights of those who are good.

Perhaps I over-simplify things but in my mind, terrorists should have rights! child rapists and those who feel like victimizing others with bodily harm have no rights! You have rights up until you are shown to be guilty, then those rights should be gone.

Save prisons for those who break laws that don't hurt people. The country is safer, people are happier, money is saved. I really believe it should be that simple.

[knighthawk06699]

I have nothing else to say about this but, ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME!!!!
This make me sick, we are so worried about being PC that we will no longer do what is right? Once a child rapists always a child rapist, and that has been proven far to many times for my comfort.