Supreme Court to rule on death penalty for child rape

[Ohio Joe]

Source: Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Supreme Court said on Friday it would decide whether the death penalty can be imposed for the crime of raping a child, expanding its review of how capital punishment is carried out in the United States.

The highest U.S. court agreed to hear an appeal by a Louisiana man who is the only person in the United States on death row for a crime other than murder. He is arguing the death penalty for child rape violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

The decision to rule on the issue came just three days before the Supreme Court hears one of the most important death penalty cases in years over a challenge to the lethal injection method of execution used across the United States.

Monday's arguments will be the first time in more than a century that the high court will consider the legality of a method of execution. Executions across the country have come to a halt since the court agreed to decide the issue in late September.


Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN0432297020080104

[DangerDave921]

1. Child Rape?

Then by all means, the death penalty is OK by me. This is really the one area of cases - violent and sexual crimes against kids -- that I don't hate the death penalty.

Anyone who can rape and kill a child has forfeited the right to be among us.

[harmonicon]

2. I mostly agree with you

I think the real question is, if this is cruel and unusual punishment for this crime, isn't it then for any crime? I too can't think of a crime more deserving of the harshest punishment we can lay down.

[sss1977]

4. try thinking rationally about your view

Think about it. When it comes to child rape, incest, molestation, all of that, we tend to think emotionally instead of rationally. You just said yourself, "it's just one of those cases". Well think about the jurors who decided his guilt. How rational do you think they were in deciding his case?

Over a hundred people on death row have been proven to be wrongly convicted after the fact. If we were to expand death row to cover cases of child rape and molestation, do you think that number is going to get smaller or bigger? You can feel as strongly as you want against bad things happening to children, but will it make you feel any better to know you helped put someone to death, who was innocent of the crime in which you felt his death was warranted?

The legal system is NOT a perfect system. Even if it's right 90% of the time, which it certainly isn't even that good, that means it's wrong 10% of the time. Do you think it's ok that 1 out of 10 people killed by the state be innocent as long as you get the other 9?

The death penalty has always been, and always will be, cruel and unusual punishment.

[provis99]

6. but that could be argued about any criminal conviction

not just death penalty cases. In fact, I suspect there are proportionately more innocents convicted of lesser crimes than those convicted in death penalty cases. And if the death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment because some innocents get convicted, then isn't all punishment cruel and unusual because innocent people are convicted in all kinds of crime? Your "rational thinking" isn't very rational.

[SemiCharmedQuark]

7. Except that anything short of death can be reversed.

Not completely, but at least some measure of justice can be done. If an innocent person is wrongly convicted and given life in prison without parole, they can be set free upon discovery of their innocence. Not so with the death penalty.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3122976

This man spent 26 years of his life in prison for a rape he did not commit. Nothing will get him his 26 years of life back, but at least he has the rest of his life. If he had been sentenced to death, nothing could be done.

[sss1977]

15. ummm yeah

There's kind of a small difference between an unjustly imposed $50 fine, and an unjustly imposed death.

[China_cat]

8. But it doesn't say 'kill' anywhere. Just rape.

Yes, this is an absolutely reprehensible crime and should be severely punished. However, the fact is (and was proven when we had the death penalty for rape here in SC) that when it is rape without murder, juries are loathe to convict if the penalty will be death. Unless, of course, the victim is white and the alleged perpetrator isn't.

We rarely got rape convictions until the death penalty was taken off the table. A rapist can still get life without parole, though. (And that usually is given when the victim is a child) I'll take that over a rapist walking the streets any day.

[Esra Star]

13. So you don't mind that the perpetrator would be encouraged to kill the victim.

How would this advance civilisation?
Specious arguments only work if you don't think.

[TommyO]

3. Child rape is hideous, but nothing justifies the death penalty.

It is barbaric, and doesn't serve any legitimate purpose in a modern society.

[heliarc]

10. I'm in agreement...

where modern societies and their citizens are concerned, but I support the death penalty in cases of proven genocide. I still believe that Mussolini's punishment was just. I believe that Pinochet, Kissinger, Milosevic and a whole host of others deserve the same. Call me a barbarian, but I believe that there is justice in the death penalty in the case of genocide. Child Rape? Not so sure. I think that I agree with the words others have spoken here leveraging the accuracy of the judicial system. It makes sense to give convicts long jail sentences with reversability in mind in the case of later proven innocence.

[TommyO]

12. Even for genocide, I'm going with life in prison without any chance of parole

The people you've listed all have their supporters and would be martyrs for their cause if executed, the same goes for some of today's world leaders, life in prison would be far more satisfying for their victims, and their victim's families than a quick and relatively painless death.

[melody]

5. Barbarism in exchange for barbarism?

How is that justice? It just creates more of what it was supposedly trying to correct.

[OKthatsIT]

9. Just as long as they specify ADULT, not teen, raping a Child,

Adult pedophiles witha history. Teens can not be tried as adults. Teenagers must be protected here. Beause psychotherapy still works for them.

[depakid]

11. Is the Court looking to expand the death penalty? Or ....

did it grant cert to bring yet another aberrant Southern state in line with federal constitutional law?

The holdings in Coker v. Georgia are abundantly clear:

(b) That death is a disproportionate penalty for rape is strongly indicated by the objective evidence of present public judgment, as represented by the attitude of state legislatures and sentencing juries, concerning the acceptability of such a penalty, it appearing that Georgia is currently the only State authorizing the death sentence for rape of an adult woman, that it is authorized for rape in only two other States but only when the victim is a child, and that in the vast majority (9 out of 10) of rape convictions in Georgia since 1973, juries have not imposed the death sentence.

(c) Although rape deserves serious punishment, the death penalty, which is unique in its severity and irrevocability, is an excessive penalty for the rapist who, as such and as opposed to the murderer, does not unjustifiably take human life.

(d) The conclusion that the death sentence imposed on petitioner is disproportionate punishment for rape is not affected by the fact that the jury found the aggravating circumstances of prior capital-felony convictions and occurrence of the rape while committing armed robbery, a felony for which the death sentence is also authorized, since the prior convictions do not change the fact that the rape did not involve the taking of life, and since the jury did not deem the robbery itself deserving of the death penalty, even though accompanied by the aggravating circumstances of prior capital-felony convictions.

(e) That under Georgia law a deliberate killer cannot be sentenced to death, absent aggravating circumstances, argues strongly against the notion that, with or without such circumstances, a rapist who does not take the life of his victim should be punished more severely than the deliberate killer.

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=433&invol=584

If bright line established in Coker is overruled, states could (and some like Texas, Georgia and others surely would) expand the death penalty to include any of a number of offenses not involving homicide.

Lawyers have a saying: "Bad facts make bad law."

And we can see why right here on DU. Emotional responses to abhorrant acts like child abuse tend to short circuit peoples' reasoning processes, leading them to lend support to policies without fully considering the ramifications down the line.

[Thothmes]

14. I would not sentence a child rapist to be executed,

I would just place that person in the general prison population with a life sentence.

[gorbal]

16. This can be worse than killing sometimes

“we have the abiding conviction that the death penalty, which is unique in its severity and irrevocability, is an excessive penalty for the rapist who, as such, does not take human life.”

From a nyt article-

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/05/washington/05scotus.html?hp

I think I would argue that the rape of a child, can take a human life. (after seeing people at work turned into near vegitables by childhood trauma)

I like the put him in the populataion idea- then at least the state isn't guilty of his death. (knowing what will happen, it probably would be but oh well who here is crying.)