Court rejects death penalty for raping children

1 hour ago
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WASHINGTON — 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.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday also cut the $2.5 billion punitive damages award in the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster to $500 million.
The court ruled that victims of the worst oil spill in U.S. history may collect punitive damages from Exxon Mobil Corp., but not as much as a federal appeals court determined.
Justice David Souter wrote for the court that punitive damages may not exceed what the company already paid to compensate victims for economic losses, about $500 million compensation.
Exxon asked the high court to reject the punitive damages judgment, saying it already has spent $3.4 billion in response to the accident that fouled 1,200 miles of Alaska coastline.
A jury decided Exxon should pay $5 billion in punitive damages. A federal appeals court cut that verdict in half.

... as reprehensible as these acts are, legally murdering the perps is not the answer

THere are SO many people who deserve to be killed it's incredible. Prisons like China Lake should not even exist as all the inmates should be put to death.

I don't know why people have such an issue with killing other people who have committed horendous crimes. What good does it do to keep them alive? And please, don't anybody give the "only God can decide" horseshit!

sorry - but IMO "only God can decide" is exactly the bullshit that is pertinent IMO

not to mention - murder is murder, even if a judge and 12 people too stupid to get out of jury duty say it's okay

(speaking of which - I'm one of those 12 stupid people - I'm on jury duty August 13. I hope it's a juicy murder case )

Lots of people deserve death. Don't be silly. Putting them in jail for the rest of their lives costs the taxpayers a lot of money, and, only makes them worse human beings.

killing them makes us worse human beings

Killing is too easy! They should be put knee deep in hog feces, then sleep in the barn warmed by the hogs body heat, wake up to the smell of the hogs waste and provide tender loving care to hogs 24-7. At the end of each year change it from hog to cow and then to sheep and then chickens... let them produce all that they consume and produce extra for those unfortunate that have had bad luck with criminals...

No TV, no climate control, no magazines, no contact to the outside world, no electricity, no running water, no heat other than that of animals equal to them.

Or, let them be judged by those amongst them... In Korea Korean soldiers who go AWOL are returned to their units where all members are put on double duty, half rations until justice is done... justice is the unit has no AWOL members in the unit.

Or, like when my dad was growing up before the teens of the 1900's... no court required... child molesters were taken to the woods by the "men"... there the man that caused a lifetime scar on a youth based on his lust was attached to a tree stump with fencing staples by his genitalia... then handed a knife and told you are free at your own will.

I'm beginning to see why you're such a huge Republican supporter

Actually, the death penalty is less cost efficient then housing an inmate for the rest of his life.

The Economics of Capital Punishment

Cruel and unusual punishment... under Common Law at the time of the founding of the US Constitution the punishment for child molestation was public stoning, striping of property and banishment... that means the subject was placed in the public square and people threw rocks at him until they got tired... they took all his property but the clothes on his back and escorted him to the limits of town...

I'd guess that if a guy showed up in the next town with knots and bloody clothes he would be welcomed as a child molester... in other words it was a s l o w death by eating tree bark. Leave the kids alone or expect to be harmed.

The cost difference is due in large part to the drawn-out appeals process that accompanies death penalty sentences.

I have no problem with the death penalty as a punishment for murder. If you take the life of another maliciously, intentionally, and without provocation, then your own is forfeit. Simple. To me, that is not "revenge", that is "justice". That doesn't mean that the condemned is broken on the wheel or tortured for public entertainment, it means that death is carried out in an expedient and timely fashion with the minimal amount of pain possible.

I do, however, have serious reservations about the imposition of the death penalty in the United States justice system as it stands today, because I think our justice system is fundamentally flawed. It is an adversarial system in which each side is often more interested in "winning" than in "finding the truth of the matter", which means that either side is subject to manipulation, misdirection, and petty abuse. To me, that is not "justice".