Quote:
Originally Posted by Bingo
what bugs me is the party lines in every thing these days.
9 jurors ... 5 liberals by definitino (or so I read, honestly don't have any idea) they all are against the death penatly for child rape. ... the 4 others all defined as conservative are for it.
does that make sense? Isn't this a more personal opinion issue than a party lines issue?
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That is correct. Ironically, the old fashioned conservatives that usually staunchly stand by the constitution dissented, while the liberals who consider the constitution more malleable ruled executing child rapists unconstitutional.
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/script...0&invol=07-343
The crime is summarized in the above link, and it's as awful as you think it is. Justice Kennedy delivered the ruling, and even he said if any non-murder crime deserved the death penalty, this was it.
The jury unanimously determined that petitioner should be sentenced to death. The Supreme Court of Louisiana affirmed. The Supreme court ruled the Louisiana law stating child rape can result in execution is unconstitutional.
Quotes from above link follow:
The Court explained
... that the Eighth Amendment's* protection against excessive or cruel and unusual punishments flows from the basic "precept of justice that punishment for [a] crime should be graduated and proportioned to [the] offense."
/snip/
For these reasons we have explained that
capital punishment must "be limited to those offenders who commit 'a narrow category of the most serious crimes' and whose extreme culpability makes them 'the most deserving of execution.' "
*8th = cruel and unusual.
Precedent cited:
"Rape is without doubt deserving of serious punishment; but in terms of moral depravity and of the injury to the person and to the public, it does not compare with murder, which does involve the unjustified taking of human life. Although it may be accompanied by another crime, rape by definition does not include the death of ... another person. The murderer kills; the rapist, if no more than that, does not... . We have the abiding conviction that the death penalty, which 'is unique in its severity and irrevocability,'
Dissenting counter:
With respect to the question of moral depravity,
is it really true that every person who is convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death is more morally depraved than every child rapist? Consider the following two cases. In the first, a defendant robs a convenience store and watches as his accomplice shoots the store owner. The defendant acts recklessly, but was not the triggerman and did not intend the killing... In the second case, a previously convicted child rapist kidnaps, repeatedly rapes, and tortures multiple child victims. Is it clear that the first defendant is more morally depraved than the second? The Court's decision here stands in stark contrast to
Atkins and
Roper, in which the Court concluded that characteristics of the affected defendants--mental ######ation in
Atkins and youth in
Roper--diminished their culpability. ... Nor is this case comparable to
Enmund v.
Florida,... in which the Court held that the Eighth Amendment prohibits the death penalty where the defendant participated in a robbery during which a murder was committed but did not personally intend for lethal force to be used. I have no doubt that, under the prevailing standards of our society, robbery, the crime that the petitioner in
Enmund intended to commit, does not evidence the same degree of moral depravity as the brutal rape of a young child. Indeed, I have little doubt that, in the eyes of ordinary Americans, the very worst child rapists--predators who seek out and inflict serious physical and emotional injury on defenseless young children--are the epitome of moral depravity.
EDITED LIBERALLY FOR BREVITY AND READABILITY.
Supreme Court rejects death penalty for raping children
