Oklahoma just joined the four states willing to make an exception to the “eye for an eye” use of the death penalty, meaning someone convicted of a second or subsequent conviction for rape, sodomy or lewd molestation involving a child under 14 can be put to death for his crimes. Could this be the next step for Kansas, which just boosted the punishment for such a crime to a minimum 25 years for the first offense and life without parole for a third offense?
Clearly, public will is for these worst of the worst sexual predators to be shown no mercy. But there is a bigger societal question, one that the U.S. Supreme Court needs to answer someday soon: Is it constitutional to execute people who haven’t killed others?
Posted by Rhonda Holman
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15 Comments
I could see that sentence coming to Kansas really soon.
Now that the SCOTUS ruled that civil case can be brought to trial on dealth penalty cases for Cruel and Unusual Punishment, we might have the dealth penalty wiped off the books for good.
When someone has proven themselves to be such a menace to society, they need to be permanently removed from it. Anyone who rapes a child deserves to die.
Why should a convicted murderer get a more painless death than the rest of us non-criminal types? I think that upon conviction, their complaint department door should be closed and locked. While it is impossible to ask their victims, it isn’t too difficult to intuit their feelings in this matter.
As a personal aside, I’d prefer we simply take those dogs out and shoot them. .45 to the head. Cheap, quick, efficient.
But I know it’s not that simple. And back to the point.
Is it unconstitutional?That depends on your view of the constitution. If you have a “texturalist/originalist” view, that the constitution is essentially unchanging and that the words can be read and meaning of the founders found and applied, even now, then no, it is not unconstitutional.
If you take the “living constitution” view that was in vogue for much of the last 70-80 years or so, all bets are off; it means whatever a majority of justices wants it to mean, and the SCOTUS isn’t bound by anything. Of course, under that view we don’t really have a constitution at all, in any substantive sense.
8th Am. law has especially taken the 2nd view; see ROPER, 543 U.S. 551 (2005). Have a strong stomach when you read that one. And tell me with a straight face, after reading it (all of it, including the dissents), that the “living constitution” view is a valid one.
In any case, given that history, it’s likely that the SCOTUS would bar CP for such an offense.
As I’ve written before, personally, I’m not a CP fan, not because it’s not justified (in cases like these, it is), but because of practical considerations. It’s not worth the cost.
I think coporate crooks who destroy thousands of lives should be put to death.
Ms. Holman asks whether execution for non-capital offenses will be found constitutional and legal. A bigger question is whether it is ethical and legitimate. Legality does not confer legitimacy.
It is a ridiculous question; we already have the death penalty on the books for treason.
We should be executing ALL pimps, rapists, child molestors, child pornographers and drung dealers. The scum should die via public hanging and I porpose using piano wire rather than rope, for effect!!
Viva La Raza Blanco!!!
In England until the 1850’s, children as young as five were hanged for stealing food. Sounds like those reactionary-right-to-life-bible-thumping-quasi-christians want to take the country back to those good old days.
I remember death for rape back in the 50s. I have to wonder – if a guy basically destroys a persons life, why not the death penalty?
BH,
If we can’t execute child raping vermin like this diaz character then there is no point in having capital punishment at all!
Viva La Raza Blanco!!!
Fayetteville Man Charged With Rape Of 11-Year-Old
POSTED: 5:04 pm EDT June 13, 2006UPDATED: 9:37 pm EDT June 13, 2006
FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. — Cumberland County authorities have arrested a Fayetteville man and charged him with what investigators call the brutal rape of an 11-year old girl.
Angel Manuel Diaz, 33, also known as Angel Diaz Rosa, of 526 Setter St., was babysitting his victim at the time of the alleged attack, authorities said.
Cumberland County sheriff’s investigators said the mother of the child, who had entrusted the care of her daughter to Diaz while she was away at work, returned home to discover her daughter had been raped. The girl was taken to Cape Fear Valley Medical Center for treatment to injuries sustained in the attack.
Diaz was arrested by deputies after he went to the hospital to check on the condition of the child. He is charged with felony assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, second-degree kidnapping and first-degree rape of a child.
Investigators have also learned Diaz is wanted in New Jersey for a parole violation and in the Virgin Islands for outstanding warrants.
Diaz is being held in the Cumberland County Detention Center under a $150,000 secured bond. He is scheduled to make his first court appearance on Thursday.http://www.wral.com/news/9364629/detail.html
I don’t think we’ll ever sink to equating a hungry child who steals food with a vicious adult who rapes a child, Jed. That’s a pretty poor argument against the death penalty. It’s only fair that when someone destroys a life, he should forfeit his own.
Da,I’m just pointing out that we have sunk to that in the not-so-distant past, and could again.
Ben,The death penalty for rape, back in the 50’s, was used primarily for interacial sex, consentual or not.
Jed,
Non consensual interracial sex IS RAPE!!! Death for all sex offenders, killers and drug dealers, period!V.L.R.B!!!
The Race War ofBlack Against Whiteby Paul SheehanThe Sydney (Australia) Morning HeraldMay 20, 1995
The longest war America has ever fought is the Dirty War, and it is not over. It has lasted 30 years so far and claimed more than 25 million victims. It has cost almost as many lives as the Vietnam War. It determined the result of last year’s congressional election. Yet the American news media do not want to talk about the Dirty War, which remains between the lines and unreported. In fact, to even suggest that the war exists is to be discredited. So let’s start suggesting, immediately.
No matter how the crime figures are massaged by those who want to acknowledge or dispute the existence of a Dirty War, there is nothing ambiguous about what the official statistics portray: for the past 30 years a large segment of black America has waged a war of violent retribution against white America. And the problem is getting worse, not better. In the past 20 years, violent crime has increased more than four times faster than the population. Young blacks (under 18) are more violent than previous generations and are 12 times more likely to be arrested for murder than young whites. Nearly all the following figures, which speak for themselves, have not been reported in America:
According to the latest US Department of Justice survey of crime victims, more than 6.6 million violent crimes (murder, rape, assault and robbery) are committed in the US each year, of which about 20 per cent, or 1.3 million, are inter-racial crimes.Most victims of race crime ‚Äì about 90 per cent ‚Äì are white, according to the survey “Highlights from 20 Years of Surveying Crime Victims”, published in 1993.Almost 1 million white Americans were murdered, robbed, assaulted or raped by black Americans in 1992, compared with about 132,000 blacks who were murdered, robbed, assaulted or raped by whites, according to the same survey.Blacks thus committed 7.5 times more violent inter-racial crimes than whites even though the black population is only one-seventh the size of the white population. When these figures are adjusted on a per capita basis, they reveal an extraordinary disparity: blacks are committing more than 50 times the number of violent racial crimes of whites.According to the latest annual report on murder by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, most inter-racial murders involve black assailants and white victims, with blacks murdering whites at 18 times the rate that whites murder blacks.These breathtaking disparities began to emerge in the mid-1960’s, when there was a sharp increase in black crime against whites, an upsurge which, not coincidentally, corresponds exactly with the beginning of the modern civil rights movement. Over time, the cumulative effect has been staggering. Justice Department and FBI statistics indicate that between 1964 and 1994 more than 25 million violent inter-racial crimes were committed, overwhelmingly involving black offenders and white victims, and more than 45,000 people were killed in inter-racial murders. By comparisons 58,000 Americans died in Vietnam, and 34,000 were killed in the Korean war. When non-violent crimes (burglary, larceny, car theft and personal theft) are included, the cumulative totals become prodigious. The Bureau of Justice Statistics says 27 million non-violent crimes were committed in the US in 1992, and the survey found that 31 per cent of the robberies involved black offenders and white victims (while only 2 per cent in the reverse).
When all the crime figures are calculated, it appears that black Americans have committed at least 170 million crimes against white Americans in the past 30 years. It is the great defining disaster of American life and American ideals since World War II. All these are facts, yet by simply writing this story, by assembling the facts in this way, I would be deemed a racist by the American news media. It prefers to maintain a paternalistic double-standard in its coverage of black America, a lower standard.
You forgot the Viva bullshit that is so hilarious!You take your self way more serious than anyone else does.There, I said it!
I am glad that you find 170 million instances of negro on White crime to be so amusing, Tracy. Go and laugh it up!
Viva La Raza Blanco!!Viva La Revolucion Blanco!!!