Court rejects death for child rape: Do you agree with the court's ruling?

The Supreme Court strikes down a Louisiana law allowing execution as punishment for raping a child, saying it violates the Constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Patrick Kennedy, 43, was sentenced to death for the rape of his 8-year-old stepdaughter in Louisiana. He is one of two people in the United States, both in Louisiana, who have been condemned to death for a rape that was not also accompanied by a killing.

The Supreme Court banned executions for rape in 1977 in a case in which the victim was an adult woman.

Forty-five states ban the death penalty for any kind of rape, and the other five states allow it for child rapists. Montana, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas allow executions in such cases if the defendant had previously been convicted of raping a child.

The court struggled over how to apply standards laid out in decisions barring executions for the mentally retarded and people younger than 18 when they committed murder. In those cases, the court cited trends in the states away from capital punishment.

In this case, proponents of the Louisiana law said the trend was toward the death penalty, a point mentioned by Justice Samuel Alito in his dissent. Apparently this man won't be executed because he didn't murder his victim.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/06/25/scotus.child.rape/index.html