The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 today that it is unconstitutional to sentence someone to death for raping a child if the victim was not killed. The majority said that imposing the death penalty violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment, because the death penalty is disproportional punishment for the crime, as heinous as child rape is. The majority also cited “the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society,†which drives constitutional originalists nuts. In 2002, the court blocked the execution of mentally retarded defendants, and in 2005 it banned the execution of people for crimes they committed before they were 18.
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46 Comments
Good news for child rapists.
——————-
“The U.S. Supreme Court made it illegal to execute persons convicted of child-rape in a 5-4 decision Wednesday.
“The death penalty is not a proportional punishment for the rape of a child,” wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy, who authored the majority opinion. The ruling broke on party lines, the liberal Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer siding with Kenney.
In their decision, the liberal justices ruled that a Louisiana law that sent 43 year-old man named Patrick Kennedy to death row in 2003 for raping his 8-year old stepdaughter was “cruel and unusual punishment.”
http://townhall.com/columnists/AmandaCarpenter/2008/06/25/scotus_no_execution_for_c
____________
It will be interesting to see if Obama would dare support the liberals on the Supreme Court on this. Here is another good chance to piss off the radical left.
This is ridiculous. Don’t these “justices” understand that often a child’s entire life is ruined by an act like this! What about the 2 month old raped in Kansas? Who’s going to explain to her, when the time comes, that she will never have children…and that the perp was permitted to live? Two MONTHS is not a typo. Thank you Court!
Simple.
The Catholic justices didn’t want their priests getting hanged.
The Wichita Eagle’s favorite fivesome strikes again.
Not only priests, but most likely the Justice’s themselves…also the other politico’s. Can’t forget this.
So you would have put all those people involved in the day care rape hoaxes of a decade or so ago to death? Many people are convicted of this crime solely on the word of children. In a recent case in Salina, a man was convicted of such a crime, despite three alibi witnesses, and no physical evidence. Plus the family which made the claim stole all his stuff, about $25,000 worth.
Juries tend to believe children, who are “not supposed to know about such things.” They do though, at least many do. It’s on teevee.
I think that putting people to death for rape would be taken advantage of..just like putting people to death for the most heinous of crimes should be reserved for just that, but it isn’t.
People get death penalty happy, and rape is one of the harder to prove beyond a reaonable doubt.
The problem with putting people to death for rape, is that if the perp knows he’s going to get death, he has no reason to leave the child alive.
Besides, I think there are worse punishments than death. Put these fools out in population.
3 of the 5 are Republic president appointees.
Personally, I disagree with the Court. Assuming the facts are as presented the rapist destroys the childs life and deserves the ultimate punishment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_care_sex_abuse_hysteria
I rest my case.
Guilt or innocence wasn;t the question, or the argument. The argument was whether not thepunishment was dispraportionate to the crime. I say it is not. THe Justices disagreed. We live with it. That’s how the system works.
That’s true, littlejohn, but approving the death penalty for rapists absolutely guarantees that innocent people would be executed, especially approving the death penalty for child rapists.
In addition, neither you nor I know what went into the judges’ thinking, nor why five judges chose to agree that the punishment was not proportionate. They could very well have decided the punishment was not proportionate because of the number of men covicted of rape who were later proven to be innocent.
“I’m gonna rip them apart. I’m going to make sure that the rest of their life is ruined, that when they’re 8 years old, they throw up; when they’re 12 years old, they won’t sleep; when they’re 19 years old, they’ll have nightmares and they’ll never have a relationship with anybody.”
. . . infamous child-hating Democrat Massachusetts state representative and shyster James Fagan (State House ph: 617-722-2040; District office ph: 508-824-7000; E-mail Rep.JamesFagan@hou.state.ma.us), vowing in a debate last month against stiff mandatory state sentences for child molesters, to rip apart child rape victims on the witness stand, seeing that as his duty as a good leftist shyster and defender of sodomy
[Sodomites commit one third of child rapes, part of our "evolving standards" on cruelty cited by "justice" Kennedy.]
Equal punishment for rape and murder would definitely result in fewer child rape witnesses against the rapist!
The justices most likely saved many children’s lives today.
The Catholic judges (Alito, Roberts, Scalia) were dissenters. The usual liberal side wrote the majority opinion on this.
Check your facts before you bash Catholics, or anybody else!
The usual liberal side wrote the majority opinion on this.
Liberals? They were Republic appointees.
This is an outrage! Child rapers should not only be killed but they should be killed in a public hanging. We need to go back to the old days of gallows in the public square where men were hung for the evil things they did. Either that or burn them alive at stake. But as usual the Republican Supreme Court always watches out for big business (Exxon) and low life criminals!
“”"Liberals? They were Republic appointees.”"”
Hopefully we can give the Republicans the death penalty in November!
These two teachers should be executed immediately!!!
The arrests of middle school math teacher Stephanie Ragusa and Freedom High School teacher Mary Jo Spack—charged seven days apart with sex-related crimes against minors…
Mary Jo Spack
A substitute teacher in Pasco County was arrested Monday and charged with unlawful sex with a minor.
Ragusa, 28, who most recently taught at Lutz’s Martinez Middle School, was arrested on March 13. She is facing charges of having sex with a 14-year-old student several times from January to May 2007.
Spack, 45, was arrested Thursday and was accused by police of meeting two Freedom High students, ages 17 and 18, at a liquor store. Spack then took the students to a motel on Fowler Avenue where they drank alcohol together, police said. Other students arrived and heard Spack and the 17-year-old having sex in the shower, an arrest report said.
“””Liberals? They were Republic appointees.”””
They were Republican appointees.
To their everlasting shame. It happens.
And when it happens, we see what happens.
Vote McCain. His appointees have to be better that Obama’s.
I have mixed feeling on this, some child rapist can not be reformed and will continue to harm children.
If the victim is under ten then there is no hope and the molester should be put to death. He was mentioned up thread, I met the sick bastart that raped the 2 years old. He will be a threat to every child under five he is around.
It is a totally different kind of criminal that sexually assaults a child under 10. Many of them are sexual sadist. And not just a threat to children but anyone whom is not able to defend themselves.
“One is the man involved in the case the court decided, Patrick Kennedy, who was sentenced to death for the rape of his 8-year-old stepdaughter…”
kansasnative, representing the Libs who defend the indefensible, tries to make the case that a teacher humping a 17 year old is the same.
Libs: Child rape? It ain’t no thang.
K-N – where were those teachers when I was in high school?
:)
w-dog – I tend to agree. Get a rope. These guys are … well, I would say animals but animals are not that low.
fleetwood says raping a 14 year old is OK.
That’s a Repuke for ya!
By the way fleetwood, I wasn’t DEFENDING the women.
I said execute ‘em!
What part of that was unclear?
kansasnative thinks a 14 year old boy can be raped by his female teacher.
What a dope.
Yes men can be raped and boys too. God you’re ignorant, perhaps you should stop going to church enema.
sex with a 14 year old is rape their is no statutory rape in Kansas
Kansas wont put to death murders can you imagine how long it would take to put a rapist to death. Plus rape can be hard to prove often its comes down he said she said. Whats the rapists incentive to keep the victim alive if he already has a capital crime that’s one less witness. Plus if you only put child rapists to death why not all? is the 19 year old or 80year old victim less important.
heres an idea dont keep rapists in protective custody dont put them on suicide watch and throw them in population, female rapists if they like sex so much throw them in mens prison.
Why the surprise? You didn’t expect a Kennedy to let another Kennedy go down over a little thing like rape!! I mean after all they’re KENNEDYS!
Nice try at spin CapnAmerica. The 4 justices who dissented were all Catholics. The ‘evolving standards of decency’ of the liberal bench is getting loonier and loonier.
If rape is not a capital offense it lowers its status as a crime comparable with murder.
A separate but related issue: many would like to continue to make the definition of rape more ambiguous. It makes it easier to take advantage of weaker members of society.
The character of our society is revealed by how we treat weaker members.
What’s wrong with life with no parole? It’s cheaper than the death penalty, keeps more tax money out of the hands of lawyers, and is slightly more correctable when the state inevitably screws up. Just think how many innocent people would have been executed if rape was a hanging offense!
About a quarter of prisoners in may state prisons are sex criminals of one sort or another, and they are in the general population. Nothing happens to them because there are so many of them. Old phucks are being given ten-to-life sentences for touching young booty. Anyone, and I mean anyone, could end up in jail for a sex crime. All it takes is the word of a child. No evidence is required.
Outlander posted >>>>
“The ruling broke on party lines, the liberal Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer siding with Kenney.”
Outlander, I do hope you are aware by now that whoever wrote that sentence had not done their homework. Three of the five justices on the majority opinion, were REPUBLICAN appointees!! NOT liberals… Not liberals at all!!!
Allowing the States to use the death penalty against child rapists does not mean that ALL child rapists deserve to die!
There is a difference between someone who repeatedly and violently rapes a young child and one who is engaged a illegal yet complicit relationship with a minor.
In a sense, you can effectively take someone’s life for your own pleasure without actually stopping a heartbeat. For a serial child rapist, maintaining the child’s life is paramount to continuing their acts of debouchery. For some rape cases, I feel that the death penalty is appropriate.
“the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society,”
What is that? Is there any evidence that we’ve evolved at all? What if they “devolve,” as seems every bit as likely? Hell, if those standards “evolve,” why have a Constititution at all; let’s just randomly pick a half-dozen or so rich Ivy League lawyers to tell us what our standards of decency are . . .
Oh. That’s what we do, in this area of the law?! My bad.
Yeesh. There is little constitutional law as deeply flawed as this one. Constitutions exist to remove some things from the reach of public opinion. Imagine, for example, applying the same standard to the 1st amendment . . .
As many of you know, I am not a fan of the death penalty. But that is not out of Constitutional limitations; the Constitution does not make CP unconstitutional. On the contrary, in the time of the framers, far more crimes were punishable by death; it was neither cruel nor unusual as the term was understood.
That hasn’t changed, and the Constitution hasn’t changed. 200+ years later, we may well decide we don’t want to execute child rapists, despite how much they deserve it, and despite how offensive it is that they share our air. But that’s a policy decision, not a Constitutional one. It is, in my opinion, error to assign to the courts, by waving the flag of the Constitution, those policy decisions. They are properly made by us, through the legislature.
So I guess is that my take on this is that the court got the outcome I agree with, but for reasons I disagree with deeply, and find dangerous to our Constitutional system. When it comes to constitutional law, the outcome of the case is often the least important thing; the rationale of the decision, and the precedent set by it, is far more important.
BTW – likely Heller decision today. Big case; the kind of case rarely seen these days, where constitutional law is made with little if any guiding precedent.
Very interesting, and very telling. Does the gov’t trust its citizens as individuals, or not?
Yes Chas, it should have said ideological lines. But do you know their party affiliation? Justices ideally would not have one.
Yep. Not very good Republican appointees. Stealth liberals.
This all boils down to the fact that the child is still alive. Now you can make the argument that their life is ruined, but ultimately that isn’t what this is about. The child in this case lived…period. Most death penalty statutes are set up to only allow for the death penalty in causes where death occurred. All this ruling did was reaffirm that this is the standard that must be adhered to.
I think the cons want to break the endless cycle where the victim of abuse becomes the abuser. With the death penalty in play, most likely wouldn’t be a surviving victim or perp.
“TomPaine
Posted June 25, 2008 at 7:33 pm | Permalink
. Whats the rapists incentive to keep the victim alive if he already has a capital crime that’s one less witness”
The only argument that makes sense, at least to me. I think the Justices were wrong, but I can live with it. I think like GMC70 it is a policy question, not a constitutional one, and given that capitol punishment was much more extant than today, I think the Founders and the earlier SCOTUS judges would have disagreed with the ruling.
“I think the cons want to break the endless cycle where the victim of abuse becomes the abuser. With the death penalty in play, most likely wouldn’t be a surviving victim or perp.”
It’s a myth that children who are sexually abused become perpetrators..otherwise women would be abusing children more than men, since they are the majority of victims. It was figured out a long time ago that men who are sexual perpetrators lie about being abused themselves to make excuses for what they did.
Sexual abuse is a guy thing…only about 2% of sexual perpetrators are women.
This is a crime that no one can even begin to guess how high the false acusation rate climbs too. My own common sence normal guy guess would be about 50/50, or 50% of the time the acusation is false.
Their are a TON of possible scenerios of injustice, and unfortunately, our law enforcement officials, prosecutors, and social service organizations have PROVEN time and time again, over and over and over, that they are not capable of using professional common sence.
Don’t take me wrong, their are cases where they find semen, or other clear cut situations where I actually do support whatever the toughest sentence available in that jurisdiction is, and if it’s death do it, (even though I’m against the death penalty in general, violent rape of a child IS worse than killing, if you kill for murder, then do so for child rape).
It’s just that the cases are not EVER so clear cut. Bill O’Reilly and Greta grab onto these stories like a dog to a bone, and who the heck even knows what the truth is after that! We have killed quite a few innocent people over the years, when DNA came on to the scene, it proved so. Now DNA has been twisted around by law enforcement and could very well be being used to falsely convict people. I’m talking about partial matches, matches that are subjective and could be interpreted differently by different experts.
I’ve heard former prosecutors say that they have won cases THAT BLEW THEIR MINDS! That they would have voted not guilty on if they were on the jury! Because the people are so inclined to think that the cops are the good guys, and the person wouldn’t be on trial if they were innocent. HOGWASH! It’s not true, and no “good” prosecutor would think that’s the case. It’s their job to state their case, and the defenders theirs, and the jury is supposed to decide.
Their is only one good point to the witch hunt that’s going on right now. So many who are falsely accused plea bargin, because they are so afraid of going to prison as a child rapist. NOW, they are going to stand and fight! They are going to make the prosecution PROVE their case!
Oh, it’s going to cost states a ton of money! It’s going to drag little kids to the witness stand to relive the terrible event (if it even happened). It’s going to ruin alot of prosecutors conviction ratios.
I’ve never seen any men who were falsely convicted of sexually abusing a child…and most of the time they get away with it.
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