WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court has struck down a Louisiana law that allows the execution of people convicted of a raping a child.
In a 5-4 vote, the court says the law allowing the death penalty to be imposed in cases of child rape violates the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
“The death penalty is not a proportional punishment for the rape of a child,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in his majority opinion. His four liberal colleagues joined him, while the four more conservative justices dissented.
There has not been an execution in the United States for a crime that did not also involve the death of the victim in 44 years.
WTF? What is more cruel and unusual than the raping of a child!?! I’d like to see what they thought if their little girl was raped or molested. I think they would be singing a different tune! I fail to see how the Dr. supervised lethal injection or electrocution of an inmate can be any more cruel than the forcable sexual assault of an innocent child and the years of suffering to follow. In my opinion execution isn’t cruel enough. Freaking people…
There is violent rape, there is molestation by coercion, and there is statutory rape. I don’t know if I regard all of these as crimes worthy of firing squad. Obviously there is a big difference between a 6 year old and a 16 year old engaging in sexual activity.
There is also a difference between Debra Lafave vs John Wayne Gacy vs. Father Mulligan from you local parish
If there is a certain degree of violence and death involved, then lethal injection is a no brainer.
I dont know. I’m torn. Emotional reaction is fry em all, and let God sort em out.
Seems to me that the citizens of a given state should be allowed to protect their children as they see fit. I don’t see a whole lot wrong with a lethal injection for raping a 2 year old, for example.
True not all crimes are created equally. But they have effectively removed this option from the table.
Statutory rape, two otherwise consenting, near adults, no violence, etc. Let the punishment fit the crime. Obviously this would not call for a death sentence, and no reasonable person would think so. As a father, would I probably be pissed. Oh yeah. But not seeking the death penalty.
I think some cases of molestation should warrant the death penalty. I guarantee you, I don’t care how “lovingly” or “nicely” you molest my child, there will be no where you can hide and no one who can help you.
I’m not saying fry em all. But for some the only question in sentencing should be original recipe or xtra tasty crispy, if you know what I mean.
I believe the Louisiana law specified under 12 or 13 years old. That alone would prevent 99.9% of the consentual underage statuatory rape type issues.
Perhaps it’s not the ideal punishment for every possible case, but it is very fitting for many of the cases and I’m disappointed to see it completely removed as a sentencing option.
I wonder if mandatory tattoing of “I RAPE CHILDREN” on the face of said offender before releasing them into general prision population would be considered cruel and unusual?
I think that the girl in this particular case was 12, not that the law specified an age of 12, but I may be wrong. I may be wrong about the following also, but I think it actually happened.
There was a case in Louisiana some years ago where a boy was molested by a male coach or instructor of some sort. Pervert fled, law retrieved him. Boy’s daddy shot pervert at the airport. Killed him dead. I think the incident was caught by news cameras, and I think that the dad was not convicted, or if he was, was given probation or a minimal sentence. I wish I could recall the details better, but I think that’s a pretty decent sketchy description. In other words, the Louisiana jury didn’t have a big problem with what Daddy did.
As was previously stated I am very torn on this. It is easy to read the title and simply state: “Any SOB who rapes a child should be brought out back and their head ventilated by the nearest armed government official” but it’s a lot more muddled than that.
Being a former soldier I know my fair share of fellow soldiers who “should have asked for ID”. To an outsider it may sound sick, but to anyone who has served they know all to well it is a fact of life. Local girls like to party with Soldiers, and often they engage the soldier in otherwise consensual sex. I have seen one respected NCO’s career and life completely ruined in a flash by a 17 year old girl. What happened? We had just returned from Iraq, his wife left him while we were away and took everything. He was lonely, he had too much to drink, a very attractive (and very much older looking) young woman approached him at a party and began making very strong sexual advances toward him. He brought her home with him, they did the deed (later he admitted that she probably knew what she was doing more so than he knew what he was doing, in bed and otherwise), and she spent the night. Next morning the girl’s mother called the police because her little angel never breaks her curfew, and they tracked her down to his house. It got ugly needless to say, and now he is a registered sex offender. In the eyes of the courts, and of society he is now a rapist, and a child abuser.
Now could they sentence someone to death for such a crime? I doubt it, however under the letter of the law it was a possibility in the past. That being said, I still feel that a rapist who abducts a child and rapes said child yet does not kill them does deserve death.
I’ve worked around hundreds of these guys that had been released from prison but then volunteered to stay at the county jail for societies good. I had the charge of protecting them from the other inmates when they needed to be escorted around the jail. If something were to happen, I wasn’t going to lose my job over letting one of them get hurt by another inmate.
I do believe the death penalty would not be a bad idea for this level of crime.
I just heard about this on CNN radio. They said a big part of the decision was the possibility of false convictions. The testimony of children being unrealiable. Not sure what I think about it. Just passing on some info.
I’m not sure how this turned into a discussion of statutory rape, which is almost always “consensual” in the common meaning of the word.
I don’t think anyone is saying that any conviction for sexual assault should automatically bring about the death penalty. But just as there are circumstances under which murder is appropriately punished by death, rape should also be considered an offense worthy of such penalty under some circumstances.
The country would be a better place is the other eight Justices took a few years off and let Scalia write all the unanimous decisions for a while. I’m just sayin’ …
Anyone who has seen a little girl literally torn to shreds by some rapist scumbag understands the benefits of the death penalty for baby rapers.
There’s some stuff in this world so depraved and inhuman that we ought not suffer the perpetrators of it to live.
People getting all worked up about the death penalty need not…2/3 of death row inmates die of natural causes before the state ever gets a shot at them anyway.
I was wondering about this very thing. Is it absolutely required that these people be kept out of the general population? Maybe they can’t be given the death penalty, but are safety net cell assignments mandatory, too?
