Court Strikes Down LA Law On Child Rape

We saw this one coming. We knew the court would not uphold this law. There was hope that, perhaps, the court would uphold the Tenth Amendment, but alas:

The Supreme Court has struck down a Louisiana law that allows the execution of people convicted of a raping a child.

In a 5-4 vote, the court says the law allowing the death penalty to be imposed in cases of child rape violates the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

"The death penalty is not a proportional punishment for the rape of a child," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in his majority opinion. His four liberal colleagues joined him, while the four more conservative justices dissented.

There has not been an execution in the United States for a crime that did not also involve the death of the victim in 44 years.

We can argue over this decision because Thomas and I have agreed the death penalty should be extended beyond simply murder; child molesters and rapists should be included in those put to death. For the most part, a pedophile is unable to be rehabilitated. The recidivism rate, unless closely monitored by mental health professionals and law enforcement, is high -- well within the ninetieth percentile.

Anyone who is victimized in such a fashion should have their perpetrator put down. Granted, unlike Boumediene which has clear-cut jurisprudence and precedent that can be argued, our opinion regarding this one is simply that the high court dislikes the death penalty for people they feel should not be held to account for their crimes.

The rape of a child, in our opinion, falls under the purview of the state to seek the death penalty. The person in question in this case would have been given the lethal injection cocktail -- a process that was upheld as constitutional by the Supreme Court back in April. We only wish the high court would make up its mind when it came to the death penalty. They seem to want it eradicated, yet they hand down contradictory decisions.

Marcie