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  1. #1
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    Default SCotUS Rules: Death Penalty Barred for Child Rape

    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.
    "Political Correctness is just tyranny with manners"
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    -James Madison, Federalist Papers, No. 46.

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  2. #2
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    Default Re: SCotUS Rules: Death Penalty Barred for Child Rape

    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]

  3. #3
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    Default Re: SCotUS Rules: Death Penalty Barred for Child Rape

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

  4. #4
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    Default Re: SCotUS Rules: Death Penalty Barred for Child Rape

    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?

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    Default Re: SCotUS Rules: Death Penalty Barred for Child Rape

    Quote Originally Posted by RandomTask View Post
    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.
    "Political Correctness is just tyranny with manners"
    -Charlton Heston

    "[The Constitution preserves] the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation...(where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms."
    -James Madison, Federalist Papers, No. 46.

    "America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy." [sic]
    -John Quincy Adams

    "I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies."
    -Thomas Jefferson

    Μολών λαβέ!
    -King Leonidas

  6. #6
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    Default Re: SCotUS Rules: Death Penalty Barred for Child Rape

    Quote Originally Posted by RandomTask View Post
    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...
    FOAC * GOA * SAF * NRA Life Member

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    Default Re: SCotUS Rules: Death Penalty Barred for Child Rape

    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.

  8. #8
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    Default Re: SCotUS Rules: Death Penalty Barred for Child Rape

    Quote Originally Posted by ChamberedRound View Post
    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.

  9. #9
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    Default Re: SCotUS Rules: Death Penalty Barred for Child Rape

    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.

  10. #10
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    Default Re: SCotUS Rules: Death Penalty Barred for Child Rape

    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.

    When injustice becomes law, rebellion becomes duty!

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