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Justice Anthony M. Kennedy
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy
Supreme Court Says Death Penalty Unconstitutional in Child Rape Cases
The court overturned a ruling by the Louisiana Supreme Court, which had held that, short of first-degree murder, no crime more deserves the death penalty.
30-Second Summary
In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled today that sentencing someone to death for raping a child is unconstitutional, assuming the victim is not killed.
Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer voted in favor of the measure.
“The death penalty is not a proportional punishment for the rape of a child,” and thus violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment, Justice Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion of the court. Kennedy wrote that the Eighth Amendment draws its meaning from “the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society,” and that the small number of states that favored the death penalty in child rape cases proved the lack of a “national consensus” in support of it.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who dissented along with Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and John G. Roberts Jr., wrote that he lamented the court’s decision to rule out the death penalty “no matter how young the child, no matter how many times the child is raped … no matter how heinous the perpetrator’s prior criminal record may be.”
The Court banned the death penalty in rape cases in 1977, and not since 1964 has anyone been sentenced to death for a crime other than murder, but over the past 13 years “several states have reacted to public outrage over crimes against children by amending their statutes to make the rape of a child punishable by death,” reports The New York Times. Louisiana was the first state to do so.
Lawyers for Patrick Kennedy, accused of raping and badly injuring his 8-year-old stepdaughter in Louisiana in 1998, petitioned the Supreme Court to hear his case last year, which resulted in the ruling Wednesday. The case will now be returned to Louisiana for resentencing.
The state law that had enabled judges to sentence Kennedy to death was enacted in 1995 and allows for the death sentence in rape cases involving children under 12 years old.
Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer voted in favor of the measure.
“The death penalty is not a proportional punishment for the rape of a child,” and thus violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment, Justice Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion of the court. Kennedy wrote that the Eighth Amendment draws its meaning from “the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society,” and that the small number of states that favored the death penalty in child rape cases proved the lack of a “national consensus” in support of it.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who dissented along with Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and John G. Roberts Jr., wrote that he lamented the court’s decision to rule out the death penalty “no matter how young the child, no matter how many times the child is raped … no matter how heinous the perpetrator’s prior criminal record may be.”
The Court banned the death penalty in rape cases in 1977, and not since 1964 has anyone been sentenced to death for a crime other than murder, but over the past 13 years “several states have reacted to public outrage over crimes against children by amending their statutes to make the rape of a child punishable by death,” reports The New York Times. Louisiana was the first state to do so.
Lawyers for Patrick Kennedy, accused of raping and badly injuring his 8-year-old stepdaughter in Louisiana in 1998, petitioned the Supreme Court to hear his case last year, which resulted in the ruling Wednesday. The case will now be returned to Louisiana for resentencing.
The state law that had enabled judges to sentence Kennedy to death was enacted in 1995 and allows for the death sentence in rape cases involving children under 12 years old.
Headline Link: ‘Supreme Court Rejects Death Penalty for Child Rape’
The Kennedy v. Louisiana case was the latest in a series in which the justices have debated capital punishment, The New York Times reports. In 2002 the Supreme Court banned the execution of mentally retarded defendants and in 2005 the court banned capitol punishment for people who committed crimes before they were 18.
Source: The New York Times
Background: Louisiana’s ruling; Supreme Court bans death penalty in rape cases
Lawyers for Kennedy petitioned the Supreme Court in September 2007 to have his case heard. At the time he was the only person on death row for a crime other than murder. The Lawyers’ petition “asks the court to consider whether the Eighth Amendment’s Cruel and Unusual Punishment clause permitted a state to impose the death penalty for child rape,” ABC reported.
Source: ABC
The Supreme Court voted to ban the death penalty in rape cases in 1977 when the state of Georgia sought permission to electrocute Ehrlich Anthony Coker for the rape of his 16-year-old wife. Coker’s attorney, David E. Kendall, “contended before the Supreme Court Justices that death was so infrequently inflicted on rapists that its imposition violated the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.”
Source: Time
Analysis: The death penalty’s implications in child rape cases
The Christian Science Monitor analyzed the pros and cons of the death penalty’s application in child rape cases in a September 2003 article: “The possibility of a death sentence may lead to even greater underreporting by children. Opponents also believe that such a law will lead to a greater number of child murders, since the attacker may feel no incentive to stop at rape.”
Source: The Christian Science Monitor
Tom Goldstein asked the question “Is death penalty for child rape excessive?” in an article in the magazine Legal Times in January. In the article, Goldstein details Kennedy’s case. The defendant argued that the death penalty was not merely “cruel and unusual” punishment in his case, but was in fact “cruel and unique” as he was the only person in the country on death row for rape.
Source: Law.com (Legal Times)
Reference: The Kennedy decision; the Supreme Court
The Supreme Court's decision in the Kennedy v. Louisiana case is available as a PDF file from the Supreme Court Web site.
Source: Supreme Court of the United States
FindingDulcinea’s Supreme Court Web Guide provides information on the Supreme Court, including the court’s history, Supreme Court decisions and background information on Chief Justices.
Source: findingDulcinea
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