"The death penalty is not a proportional punishment for the rape of a child"

[creekster]

Originally Posted by minn_stat

I don't have strong feelings one way or another regarding the subject of whether or not the death penalty is appropriate for rape victims. However, I do have strong feelings about the appropriateness of SCOTUS, or any other court, overturning a law enacted through the appropriate venues on such flimsy reasoning. Let the people, through their representatives, make the laws. If they are in clear breach of the constitution, fine, overturn them. But the reasoning I'm seeing here doesn't come close, IMO.

I havent' read th eopinon but didn't the court say exactly what you are suggesting it should say, that the law violates the 8th amendment?

[SeattleUte]

This opinion is a perfect example of what I was saying yesterday about Scalia:

"Justice Alito wrote a dissent lamenting that the majority had ruled out executing someone for raping a child 'no matter how young the child, no matter how many times the child is raped, no matter how many children the perpetrator rapes, no matter how sadistic the crime, no matter how much physical or psychological trauma is inflicted, and no matter how heinous the perpetrator’s prior criminal record may be.'”

This is Alito writing but it's an illustration of the point: his opinion is really not based on "strict construction." He likes the death penalty. He can't believe there aren't rapists out there who would deserve the death penalty their crime was so horrible. Often the conservative justices are just as big or bigger offenders at imposing their own moral order as the liberals. "Strict construction" is often the pretext or the cover.

[Mars]

This whole thing just pisses me off.

[il Padrino Ute]

Originally Posted by MikeWaters

Tex, what about executing drunk drivers who kill?

I am all for this. And I'm all for executing a POS who would rape a child.

Tex and I are apparently in the minority here, but I will not apologize for believing that anyone who would rape a child should die. And it should be the slowest, most excruciating painful death possible.

[exUte]

Originally Posted by Indy Coug

Tex, where do you draw the line? Do we just use the "stomach factor" to determine which crimes are worthy of capital punishment and the ones that really make you sick get the heave-ho?

I think life without parole would be appropriate here.

unit.

[exUte]

Originally Posted by il Padrino Ute

I am all for this. And I'm all for executing a POS who would rape a child.

Tex and I are apparently in the minority here, but I will not apologize for believing that anyone who would rape a child should die. And it should be the slowest, most excruciating painful death possible.

and his attitude of 'becoming a lady' is demonic!

[exUte]

Originally Posted by Tex

So says Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy in yet another 5-4 decision.

It's hard for me not to just be thoroughly disgusted with that statement.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080625/..._co/scotus_rdp

agrees with you on that one.

[Cali Coug]

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.

[Cali Coug]

Originally Posted by Tex

Did you read the definition of aggravated rape according to the Louisiana statute, Indy? There are 5 other states with child-rape-death-penalty laws, have you read any of those? Putting on my amateur legislator's hat, I'm truthfully not sure how I would legislate this, but I find the Louisiana statute to be reasonable.

I also find this specific case to be worthy of such a penalty. Are you suggesting that in order for my position to be sound, the phrase "the entire perineum was torn from the posterior fourchette to the anus" needs to be in the statute?

As I said before, the second point here is whether or not the Court's reasoning is sound. You're making an argument they did not make. They based their decision on their assessment that a "national consensus" exists opposing this practice, nor in line with "evolving standards of decency." Are you comfortable with them being the judge of what constitutes a national consensus or standards of decency, or do you simply like their ruling because you agree with it, for your own reasons?



I'm not advocating that. But we've already got hypotheticals expressed in this thread when no one is dealing with what actually happened. Forget policy for a moment ... read what happened to this girl. If the option were available to you as a juror, would that enough for you?

The language of the Eighth Amendment is "cruel and unusual punishment." What are the justices to do in interpreting that language if not deciding what society views as being cruel and in determining the extent to which the punishment is unusual? Is there some sort of fixed meaning to the terms "cruel" and "unusual?"

[Cali Coug]

Originally Posted by Tex

Perhaps. The death penalty has lots of murky areas as well, such as the recent controversy around executing mentally-challenged folks. There is no easy path to determining when to take a life, which is why this is a complex issue.

Personally I don't support the logic of using the death penalty to influence behavior, but you brought it up.

Well hang on, then. What is the purpose of the death penalty if not to influence behavior? That is the primary rationale given for the death penalty. That is the primary rationale for our entire penal code.