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Originally Posted by Tex
The Court's opinion re-iterates the conditions for aggravated rape, which is what this man was charged with. I'll include the link below. You can decide if the law is just or not. A separate question is whether the Court's reasoning in this case is sound, which I agree with Alito, it's not.
As you may have gathered, it's hard for me to read the facts of this case and not agree with it.
http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/07pdf/07-343.pdf |
It depends on what purpose you believe the death penalty serves. If you believe the death penalty is a punishment enacted out of vengeance by a society so repulsed by an offender that it can only be satisfied by watching the offender die, then maybe it is appropriate. That seems like a very bad basis for the death penalty, though.
If you view it as a deterrent for crime, then is there any evidence that sex offenders are deterred by the death penalty? I doubt it. In fact, given the almost universal presence of mental addiction of sex offenders to sex (particularly pedophilia), I would bet that is one of the groups of criminals least likely to be influenced by the possibility of the death penalty.
So what logical reason is there to make it available for this kind of crime? Nobody disputes the vulgar, heinous, disgusting and evil nature of sex crimes, particularly where a child is involved. I do think we may be succumbing to a dark inner desire to watch bad people suffer and die (which itself is perverse) when we ask for sex offenders to be executed (and that dark inner desire is frequently expressed in the form of "I don't even care how he is killed- make it painful). It seems to me that we can and ought to be better than that.