I know that Dr. Bombay is working on a piece about the Court’s ruling in the child rape death penalty case, Kennedy v. Louisiana, which you can read here, but I wanted to get out ahead of him before his communist propaganda saps and impurifies all of our precious bodily fluids. (Ed Note: bodily fluids reference.)
The Supreme Court in this case basically stated that five Justices of the Supreme Court are better at determining the will of the people of the United States than Congress and the state legislatures are. This is the kind of judicial activism that makes people disgusted with the judicial branch.
I have a real problem with the the legal arguments behind this opinion. Kennedy’s reasoning seems tautological – no one has been executed for these crimes in 40 years, and only six states have enacted child rape capital punishment laws. He uses these facts as a means of justifying the argument that society has decided child rape should not be punished by the death penalty. This is a ridiculous conclusion, given that it was the Court’s jurisprudence that was the reason behind the amount of time since the last execution, and the Court’s dicta in Coker v. Georgia, 433 U.S. 584 (1977) that suggested that the death penalty for any crime not involving the death of the victim would probably not pass constitution muster, made states hesitant to go through the long process of creating a child rape death penalty law – why go through the process if the Court will likely strike the laws down anyway?
Determining whether society’s morals have evolved on capital punishment is not a role for the Court. It certainly shouldn’t be a part of any Constitutional anaylsis framework. It’s a question for Congress and the state legislatures. The Supreme Court here substituted their own morality for the views of the American people. They have now made it effectively impossible to impose the death penalty for any cases that don’t involve the death of the victim. That is a decision that should have been made by the elected representatives of the people themselves, not the Court.
No related posts.
Banning the death penalty on these cases actually helps protect the victim in some perverse ways. If I’m raping a kid and I KNOW it’s death penalty if caught, I just kill him/her then and there and dispose of the body to increase my odds of never getting caught. Now as the system is set up, if I am in a death penalty state, I rape them and go out of my way to not put them in danger of dying because to do so would warrant the death penalty.
Besides, this starts the slipper slope where adult rape gets the death penalty, and then child molestatin, etc. Until those wacky Southern states are killing people for jaywalking.
First of all shouldn’t jaywalking be at the top of the slippery slope? is it so hard to use the crosswalk? stopping for pedestrians walking in the middle of the street makes me waste gas and time. and it is, after all, all about me.
whether the death penalty may or may not encourage the rapist to actually kill the child is irrelevant to the court’s analysis. however it’s a question the legislature should be able to consider when formulating the punishment for the crime. now, they can’t. it’s analagous to the “leaving all options on the table” in foreign policy. bad actors need to know that war is an option we’ll consider. just as the criminal ought to know that his actions may result in his death.
Exactly. All of these issues are “balancing” issues that are more appropriate for the legislature to weigh in enacting the law than they are in the Court for use in interpreting it.
I don’t think there is anything cruel or unusual in the death penalty for cases not involving the death of the victim, but the Kennedy and the rest of the liberal wing seem to think that the 8th Amendment deals more with the punishment and less with the individual right to be free from cruelty or degrading punishment.
I just find it hard to understand that the Supreme Court seems to think it’s okay to put a man to death for standing next to an accomplice in a convenience store while he shoots the clerk, but it’s not okay to put a man to death for repeatedly and brutally raping an 8 year old. There’s a gap in logic there that I can’t bridge.
I mean, honestly, if you have a problem with giving the death penalty for raping a 12-year-old, round up support and get the law changed. But to say that its violative of the 8th amendment? Wow. I haven’t read the opinion, so i am speaking from ignorance, but that was my first reaction and still my reaction today.
Oh, and screw Exxon Valdez. My firm has a portion of the punitive damages award on contingency. Adios any glimmer of a hope of a prosperity bonus.
$500 million isn’t enough for a bonus? Sheesh.
First off, we only have a portion of the award. Second, contingency is prob 33% of the portion. Thirdly, theres about 220 attorneys, and Mojo is not towards the top of the totem poll. Hence, screw Exxon.
That sucks.
[...] Big Show decided to use the SCOTUS decision in Louisiana v. Kennedy as cover for the Federalist Society talking points, I found myself considering the “punishment” that the Court found appropriate on for an [...]