Thia seeems to be another pointless law which will have more adverse effects than positive achievements:
Louisiana’s Supreme Court ruled that a man may be executed for raping an 8-year-old girl, and lawyers say his case may become the test for whether the nation’s highest court upholds the death penalty for someone who rapes a child.
Both sides say the sentence for Patrick Kennedy, 42, could expand a 1977 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that held the death penalty for rape violated the Eighth Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment. The high court said then that its ruling applied only to adult victims.
Attorney Jelpi Picou, director of the New Orleans-based Capital Appeals Project, said he will ask the Louisiana Supreme Court for a rehearing and, if rejected, will go to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“As horrid as (rape) is and as harshly as we believe it should be condemned, death is inappropriate in this case,” Picou said.
Attention Lousiana rapists- better make sure your victim is dead and can not pick you out of a line-up. It isn’t like you have anything to lose.
Mr Furious
Wasn’t sure where you were going with that John. Good, not quite obvios point at the end. Unintended consequences? What are those?
Mr Furious
That piece of fucking scum might deserve to die… but at the Court’s/State’s hand? No.
He’ll get what’s coming to him in prison.
Cyrus
So confused by this post. Are you commenting on the Louisiana Supreme Court ruling that was the subject of the linked article, or the state law it apparently is based on?
Ahhh, this part was confusing too, but I think I get it now. You’re saying that in Louisiana, a rapist gets the death penalty whether he kills his victim or not, so he might as well kill them to reduce the chances of being caught. Right?
Zifnab
Yeah, that’s another thing we need to discuss as a society. Prison rape is not supposed to be a part of the imprisonment/rehabilitation policy. It doesn’t “punish the guilty”, it just rewards the biggest bully.
However, I do like this new take on the death penalty. Now we can wrongly and unjustly sentence minorities to the gas chamber for a whole new host of reasons. You thought the 30-to-1 black-to-white ratio of convicts on death row was bad in Texas before? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
The Other Steve
It’s part of a new trend… Bashing sex offenders. It helps the politicians to get elected, so it must be good, right?
ThymeZone
The main weakness of the death penalty concept is in the fallibility of justice, the system, and government. Who in his right mind wants to give the power of life and death to the government that would pass a stupid law like this?
yet another jeff
Cyrus, that was my first thought and after thinking about it, I’m still agreeing that all this will do is result in the death of the child so as to improve the odds of getting away with it.
Although it wasn’t a law that was passed, it was a Supreme Court decision. Do the judges on the La. Supreme Court have to run for election? What is wrong with these people that they can’t see consequences of their decisions? If they aren’t running for election, they don’t even have the excuse of making bad decisions due to pandering. Why does the Louisiana State Supreme Court want raped children to die?
mrmobi
Yep. And, of course, this constitutes the prison “job training” program for rapists, bullies and murderers.
Let’s just put ’em in prison and let the really bad ones get what they deserve.
It’s a great system which produces a substantially more brutalized ex-con.
That 11-year-old kid who bagged a 1,000+ lb. wild hog was on the Today Show this morning.
The hosts congratulated him on his kill. I believe we are not in Kansas anymore, Toto.
norbizness
Similar legislation was brought up in Texas and passed, I believe. Another unintended consequence is families further hushing up child rape if they think the perp could get a lethal injection.
As for the “gets what’s coming to him in prison,” I thought it was a reference to child rapists being essentially considered the lowest of the low and targeted for murder, rather than an invitation to rape.
Of course, DNA tests are exonerating convicted rapists all the time (meaning that the actual rapist is still out there), this would only add another subset of people for things like The Innocence Project to hopefully before they are killed, judicially or otherwise.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
I can’t wait to see what Scalito does with all this.
Rome Again
Yeah, that’s how I took it as well.
yet another jeff
Perhaps something should be done about the whole prison rape thing…or we just quit dancing around the issue and actually sentence people to be raped.
Mr Furious
Yep, that’s how I meant it.
sean
Does the term “Louisiana rapist” include anyone in the Bush Administration?
Mr Furious
Clarification: Another Jeff got in there first…I meant what norbiz and Rome said—child molesters get taken care of in prison.
I am giving an honest, gut reaction as a father of two girls, the uncle of three girls and the older brother of three sisters. If you raped any of them, I would want you to die. Straight up. Do I want that to be the law of the land? No. Is it contrary to my otherwise liberal state of being? Yes. But it doesn’t change how I’d feel.
Rome Again
They couldn’t do that, it would be state-sanctioned sex, and God would never allow the perfect Jesusland known as the United States to become a party in such a thing.
Zifnab
DNA tests aren’t manditory for prosecution. And if you don’t have a good lawyer, a practiced prosecutor can take the whole court for a ride on what DNA testing means and doesn’t mean.
Don’t get me wrong, we’ve come a long way from the “lone white witness gets you lynched” days, but this isn’t a panacea for the judicial system by a long shot.
Hadn’t considered the “honor among thieves” take on that. Again, I don’t quite see how this makes our world a better place. Just a more violent one.
Carlo
While there are many reasons why the death penalty should be opposed in this case and others, I don’t think deterring would-be rapists from killing their victims is one of them. Do you seriously believe that any rapist capable of killing would not do so even if the punishment for getting caught were only life imprisonment? Do you think rapists undertake some risk-benefit analysis: “Hmm, I should now kill this little girl because she might identify me one day, leading to the death penalty. But when I rape my next victim in Missouri, I’ll spare her because I’ll only get life imprisonment over there…” Somehow this seems doubtful.
Rome Again
It’s a social more prison style. While it may seem harsh, it actually creates a bit of remorse in the convict after he deals with the isolation inside the prison population. He has to be sent to live in higher security because of the harm he could endure.
MSNBC ran a piece just last week on a mother who was convicted of raping her daughter and was sent to prison and suffered from this same exact thing. She said the treatment she received from other prisoners made her realize how wrong the thing she had done really was.
Zombie Santa Claus
Which, given STD rates in prison and non-availability of condoms, basically sentences car thieves, drug dealers, and other non-violent criminal offenders to a slow, indirect death sentence. (In fact, South African prison gangs deliberately rape people in order to infect them with HIV. It’s called a “slow burn,” if memory serves.) What a country! Selling marijuana gets you raped; raping kids gets you raped; ending up with a shitty cellmate, regardless of your offense, gets you raped.
Fuck stare decisis. Let’s bring back the death penalty for rape. Unless the rape’s in prison. Then it’s death penalty by rape, and it’s completely acceptable.
Zombie Santa Claus
Here’s a good website for those who want to do something about rape statistics for the members of our society behind bars.
2.2 million people are in prison, and 7 million are in the corrections system in this country. That’s a pretty hefty chunk of our population to consign to a rape machine.
Source
Jake
So no worries this will make juries less likely to find sex offenders guilty, right?
A piece of shit distinction if there ever was one. If you suggested a similar distinction for murder you’d be laughed out of court. But hey, if it allows some gas bag the maintain the illusion that his protecting the kiddies, who am I to object?
Excellent point. And if rape warrants the death penalty for the perp. what will the law say about the people who knew about it? Yeah. That will encourage relatives to come forward or try to remove the child from the situation. More likely the rapist will use fear of jail to keep the other adults in line.
The Other Steve
Going out a limb here.
I suspect that a 42 year old man, faced with the prospect of raping an 8 year old girl… is not in his right mind.
That is, I doubt that the threat of putting him in Dick Cheney’s personal torture chamber will make him not commit the crime. There’s something else wrong there.
It seems that to prevent this we need more early detection, and early counseling. If someone has thoughts like this, they need to get help before they act on them. Something if fucked up with their minds.
Now I’m not saying that a man raping a 20 year old woman is in his right mind. It’s just a different level of fuckedupiness.
Keith
Who woulda thought “eye for an eye” was too moderate?
Rome Again
The Levite priests? Unless you were a hebrew male talking about having sex with a three year old girl, then it’s okay, the hymen will eventually grow back, they say.
Fwiffo
Does it seem to anyone else that an 8th amendment objection to the death penalty is stupid? I’m asking that as someone who is adamantly opposed to the death penalty. Unless you’re using a particularly medieval method of execution, nothing about it is all that cruel (certainly in comparison to US prisons/rape rooms), and it sure as hell isn’t unusual. And to argue that it’s cruel and/or unusual for crime X but not crime Y, or class of criminals FOO but not class of criminals BAR, seems utterly absurd…
Mr Furious
Good oints all, Fwiffo.
Mr Furious
Good points all, Fwiffo.
Zifnab
“Cruel and Unusual” is unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) incredibly vague. To use some gross exaggeration, you could conceivably have a crime X carrying the same penalty as crime Y . Assigning both a ten year prison sentence would be cruel, or at least unusual, in the first case but not in the second. Likewise, if chemical castration was ever approved on rapists, I think you’d agree it would be inappropriate to use on guys caught going ten miles above the speed-limit.
And, as more than one person has previously pointed out, the severity of the crime changes the way the perp acts. If you rape an 8-year-old girl and you know getting caught will cost you your life… what’s to loss by killing her too? If you know selling pot gets you life in prison – but so does cop killing – why not open fire when the cops come to arrest you? If all vandelism is treated equally, feel free to make a bigger mess. If all crimes carry the same punishment, the only thing that matters is not getting caught.
Fwiffo
It is vague language, probably intentionally so (societal standards for cruelty change, and perhaps the framers recognized that). But it addresses cruelty, not appropriateness. Yes, chemical castration is an inappropriate penalty for your average speeder, but a $100 fine is a pretty inappropriate penalty for a rapist.
A certain degree of cruelty is going to be there – I mean, life in prison is cruel, but necessary and appropriate for some crimes. If we decide that, say, chemical castration is necessary and appropriate for serial rapists that doesn’t suddenly make it “not cruel/unusual”. It just means that it meets a level we’re willing to accept for that crime.
So, there’s an implicit appropriateness standard when deciding on the punishments dolled out for lawbreaking. But there isn’t a constitutional guideline for appropriateness beyond vague 8th amendment prohibitions. Beyond that, the severity of punishments seems to be something entirely in the scope of legislators, not courts.
Unfortunately, I think I’m arguing a point I don’t even agree with. There was a Supreme Court ruling a couple years ago that ended capital punishment for minors. I don’t see how one can reason that the death penalty is cruel/unusual just because of the perpetrator’s age. There are a million and one other reasons why it’s wrong (even if you support capital punishment for adults), but I fail to see how cruelness is one of them. Certainly though, I don’t think the government should have the power to execute minors. I guess maybe the “unusual” part applies. Even most of the world’s worst hellholes have managed to abolish the death penalty for children.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
“Evolving standards of decency” was the language the Supreme Court used in Trop v. Dulles. The Court takes the role of arbitrating that distinction upon itself, in its role as the interpreter of the Constitution. Hopefully, this means we won’t slide backward as Scalito and Roberts take over the Court. But if you read these death penalty cases, a lot of weird shit comes in the dicta. Opinions polls, journal articles, international treaties, and state-by-state practices are all used to determine how far our society has “matured.”
I guess if you go by the “Originalist” interpretation, then a punishment isn’t cruel if it was used in 1791 (Scalia likes to cite pre-revolutionary colonial punishments, which completely misses the point of his own position, but I digress). “Unusual” might’ve meant singling a person out for special mistreatment, like ordering a guy tortured to death in a certain way for committing the same crime as another guy who was just hanged. Kind of a “no bills of attainder” provision for human punishment. That’s the Originalist position, anyway. One that I happen to disagree with. I think the evolving standards of decency is much more in keeping with our society’s self-envisioning as a civilized country. Otherwise, we might as well go back to legalizing wife-beating and public flogging the stocks, because those were common practices when Ben Franklin was running around.
I think you just answered your own question- if we’re only one of 3 or 4 countries still practicing it, 12 of our states don’t have the death penalty, and only 20 or so of the remaining 38 have capital punishment for minors, it’s pretty unusual.
Zifnab
In the end, it comes down to the question, “Why do we punish criminals?” Do we enact punishment to get even? Do we punish them in hopes of reform? Is punishment a deteriant against future transgressors? Do we just do it because our social norms demand it? Do we punish for some sort of material gain or profit?
Assuming execution is supposed to avenge the wronged child, then I guess there is nothing really wrong with Patrick Kennedy getting the axe. If we assume rapists can be fixed into healthy members of society, then capital punishment would be a massive mistake. If this is an attempt to scare the crap out of would-be child rapists, I haven’t seen any numbers to back the claim up. There is certainly a great outcry among wronged parents to have a molestor’s head, but if I remember correctly, the appeals process for a capital crime can cost the state well more than indefinite detainment.
So what does LA hope to accomplish by all this grandstanding?
Detlef
Zifnab,
I don´t disagree with your post. Just let me add…
We do punish convicted criminals for two reasons:
– Punish them for their crimes and – hopefully – deter them from future crimes
– Deter any would-be criminals from similar crimes
Once the criminal is in prison society has three jobs:
– Try to rehabilitate them if possible (job programs for example)
– Give free treatment to mentally ill criminals (or face a repeat of their crime once they get released)
– If we´ve got really dangerous criminals or criminals not accepting the free treatment, that would be candidates for life without parole.
Life without parole would have the added advantage that anyone convicted of a serious crime and later found innocent would still be alive.
Given the added proposal that we – as a society – won´t tolerate prison violence, the occasional innocent convicted person could still emerge from prison relatively unhurt. We can´t – of course – give them back the lost years. But we can still compensate them with money for the lost years. As long as someone is still alive we can admit a mistake.
I do wonder though how prosecutors and police would react if they got some hints that they might have prosecuted and executed an innocent person? Wouldn´t it be a normal reaction to try and deny that an innocent person had been executed? It´s a serious risk in my opinion.
That child rapist in this case should be sentenced to life without parole when convicted. Raping a child is one of the worst crimes I can imagine. Maybe he can be treated, I don´t know. I´m simply saying that although this person is probably guilty of a horrific crime, the next similar case might involve an innocent suspect. And not only did you then – perhaps – prosecute and execute an innocent person, the real criminal would be still free. And because the prosecutor and the police already solved the case they might be a bit more hesitant to accept that the real criminal might still be free? And be a bit slow to follow further hints?
BIRDZILLA
Its like when they exicuted ROBERT ALTON HARRIS his lawyers tried to use all sorts of stupid excuses why he murdered two teenage boys then those idiots protesting and lighting their candles and then there was TOOKIE WILLIAMS i mean were tired of all the stupid excuses they use. I mean when it came to the notoruous CHARLES STARKWEATHER who mudered his girlfreainds parents and little sister they did,nt fool around cuuck starkweather had a quick date with old sparkie and a one way ticket to the cematery
Zombie Santa Claus
That’s beautiful, BIRDZILLA. Thank you.