The Supreme Court Rules

[packinpatland]

Personally, I feel that anyone who rapes a child is better served, serving a life sentence rather being put to death. Having said that tho, this rational doesn't work for me........

"Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion that "evolving standards of decency" in the United States forbid capital punishment for any crime other than murder.

"We conclude that, in determining whether the death penalty is excessive, there is a distinction between intentional first-degree murder on the one hand and nonhomicide crimes against individual persons, even including child rape, on the other," wrote Anthony Kennedy, who is of no relation to the convicted rapist.

Execution of Patrick Kennedy, the justice also wrote, would be unconstitutional on the grounds of the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. "




http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/06/25/...ape/index.html

[Freak Out]

I also heard a comment that if it was punishable by death the rapist would be forced to murder his victim to hide his identity. Were a sick species.

[HarveyWallbangers]

Personally, I'm with Anthony Kennedy on this one. It's really tough to be against capital punishment at times though. I'm sure I'm in the minority.

[Deputy Nutz]

Personally, I'm with Anthony Kennedy on this one. It's really tough to be against capital punishment at times though. I'm sure I'm in the minority.

The problem with capital punishment is that we don't do it with enough brutality. We would have to do it far less if we ripped these bastards apart piece by piece.

Instead of killing child rapist maybe we just castrate them instead?

[BallHawk]

If we only we kicked it old school like this dude....



Hammurabi had it down.

[Freak Out]

Personally, I'm with Anthony Kennedy on this one. It's really tough to be against capital punishment at times though. I'm sure I'm in the minority.

The problem with capital punishment is that we don't do it with enough brutality. We would have to do it far less if we ripped these bastards apart piece by piece.

Instead of killing child rapist maybe we just castrate them instead?

I thought this was done in some cases?

[the_idle_threat]

Life in prison is a sentence to die in prison. Might as well do it sooner rather than later. The eighth amendment argument is troubling for those of us who believe there is a place for capital punishment, because why is it less "cruel and unusual" to use it on a murderer than on a child rapist? Capital punishment, generally, is not cruel and unusual in the mind of the drafters of the bill of rights, because it was practiced then. We can keep expanding the definition of this phrase until it is meaningless. Warehousing people for decades until they die is pretty cruel and unusual when you think about it. So maybe we should slap them on the hand and let them go free.

And I don't buy the idea that capital punishment would increase the murder of child victims. Even without the possibility capital punishment, a child rapist is gonna get put away for a long time, and the time they do is extra harsh because of how child rapists are viewed by other prisoners. If they had it in them to kill the child, they would probably do so to avoid getting caught. I don't think the level of punishment has much to do with it.

[Deputy Nutz]

Personally, I'm with Anthony Kennedy on this one. It's really tough to be against capital punishment at times though. I'm sure I'm in the minority.

The problem with capital punishment is that we don't do it with enough brutality. We would have to do it far less if we ripped these bastards apart piece by piece.

Instead of killing child rapist maybe we just castrate them instead?

I thought this was done in some cases?

Chemical castration, which wasn't worked in some cases.

[Zool]

I dont think serving a sentence where you will never be out of prison makes any sense at all. Its a strain on everything. Prisons are over populated, money is tight and there aren't enough guards as it is. Plus inmates file frivolous lawsuits all the time. Jail time is just not a strong enough deterrent obviously.

[Gunakor]

It doesn't make any sense from the taxpayer's perspective to house a criminal for life either. How is it fair to the taxpayer to fund the housing and nourishment of a criminal who will never ever become a productive member of society? Then there's the salaries of the guards who have to keep an eye on them... I'd imagine decades of imprisonment comes at an extremely high cost. If the crime committed were so horrendous that life without the possibility of release is the only just sentence, they really don't deserve to live on the taxes paid by good, descent, law abiding citizens.

[Harlan Huckleby]

my problem with capital punishment is I don't trust the justice system to figure out who done it. And it's a lot easier to convict a poor person.

[Harlan Huckleby]

Jail time is just not a strong enough deterrent obviously.

The death penalty is not a deterent at all.

[Zool]

Maybe not, but repeat offenders would be cut drastically.

[Harlan Huckleby]

Warehousing people for decades until they die is pretty cruel and unusual when you think about it. So maybe we should slap them on the hand and let them go free.

I agree that a life in prison is not much different from a death penalty. Not sure where the "slap on the hand" argument comes from. Are you saying anybody who is against the death penalty must be a panty waist sissy?

[the_idle_threat]

Warehousing people for decades until they die is pretty cruel and unusual when you think about it. So maybe we should slap them on the hand and let them go free.

I agree that a life in prison is not much different from a death penalty. Not sure where the "slap on the hand" argument comes from. Are you saying anybody who is against the death penalty must be a panty waist sissy?

No, and sorry if I touched upon a sore spot or something. :P

It's reductio ad absurdum. If we keep moving the bar of what qualifies as "cruel and unusual," then we will rule out more and more punishments until a slap on the hand is all that's left. And it had better not be a hard slap, because that would be cruel.

[texaspackerbacker]

Personally, I'm with Anthony Kennedy on this one. It's really tough to be against capital punishment at times though. I'm sure I'm in the minority.

The problem with capital punishment is that we don't do it with enough brutality. We would have to do it far less if we ripped these bastards apart piece by piece.

Instead of killing child rapist maybe we just castrate them instead?

A degree of sarcastic truth there.

It is pretty hard even for an avowed capital punisher like me to argue that Justice Kennedy is wrong in saying death is way too excessive for the crime of rape, even of a child.

There was a case in the news today of a home invasion in Pasadena, Texas--a husband and wife and their child murdered in their own home. If they want to have mandatory capital punishment for a particular crime, THAT type of thing ought to be at the top of the list.

[Harlan Huckleby]

It's reductio ad absurdum. If we keep moving the bar of what qualifies as "cruel and unusual," then we will rule out more and more punishments until a slap on the hand is all that's left. And it had better not be a hard slap, because that would be cruel.

I don't think "cruel" is a good argument. And fuck the constitution, lets talk about what's fair and decent.

What about when Nutz is allowed to have his way & chops the perp up into little pieces, and then we find out that, whups, the guy didn't do it? Our justice system is not so swift.

Most of the world has abolished the death penalty. The countries who keep it tend to be thuggish. Its bad pr to have the Beacon of Light to the world rubbing people out.

[Freak Out]

I like to think that we've grown as a society (I know....fantasy) and as HH stated gotten beyond the thuggish behavior that has passed as justice.....and then I read about something like this and my answer is one single bullet.

Prosecutor Details Rape That Lasted 19 Hours
By JOHN ELIGON

The time crept by so slowly and painfully that the 23-year-old Columbia University journalism student had decided it was time to end her life.

Over many torturous hours, she had been repeatedly raped, sodomized and forced to perform oral sex, a prosecutor told a jury on Thursday. The accused, Robert A. Williams, 31, had doused the woman’s face and body with boiling water and bleach, forced her to swallow handfuls of pills and to chase them with beer, sealed her mouth with glue, and bound her wrists and legs with shoelaces, cords and duct tape, said the prosecutor, Ann P. Prunty. And now, Ms. Prunty said, he was asking the woman to gouge out her own eyes with a pair of scissors.

And so the woman, sitting on the floor of her studio apartment in Hamilton Heights and holding a pair of scissors between her knees — the blade pointing toward her face — tried to stop the suffering. She lowered her face to the blade, but turned her head at the last moment, trying to stab herself in the neck instead of her eyes.

The scissors slipped from her grasp, the suicide attempt failed, and the woman suffered several more hours of torture, Ms. Prunty said.

The woman survived the nearly 19-hour ordeal, which ended, Ms. Prunty said, when she used a fire started by Mr. Williams to burn the cords that secured her wrists to a futon.

Mr. Williams went on trial Thursday in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, where he faces 71 criminal counts, including attempted murder, rape, arson and assault. If convicted, he could spend the rest of his life in prison.

Mr. Williams, who was homeless at the time of his arrest about a week later at the scene of a burglary in Queens, has a lengthy police record dating to his childhood, the authorities have said.

He was charged in a murder as a juvenile, though the outcome of that case is sealed, a law enforcement official said, and he spent eight years in prison for an attempted-murder conviction in 1996.

The prosecution began presenting its case with Ms. Prunty’s vivid, step-by-step account of the attack, which she said began about 10 p.m. on April 13, 2007, and lasted until 4 p.m. the following afternoon. Mr. Williams’s lawyer, Arnold J. Levine, did not make an opening statement. Outside the courtroom, Mr. Levine declined to talk about his strategy. In hearings before the trial, he seemed to indicate that he would challenge witnesses’ identification of his client.

The victim and several witnesses in the six-story apartment building where the woman lived picked out Mr. Williams from lineups, Ms. Prunty said. She said that DNA evidence also linked him to the crime.

Justice Carol Berkman, who is presiding over the trial, found in October that Mr. Williams was mentally fit for trial. After that decision, Mr. Levine said he was considering a mental illness defense.

As Ms. Prunty delivered her opening statement, Mr. Williams sat slouched in his chair, with his head tilted downward.

On the night of the attack, the victim, a month from graduating with a master’s degree, was at Columbia, putting the final touches on her résumé for a job fair the next day, Ms. Prunty said. When she arrived at her apartment building, she got on the elevator and found Mr. Williams inside, Ms. Prunty said. She rode with him to her floor, and could hear him follow her as she navigated the long L-shaped hallway to her apartment.

As the woman entered her apartment, Ms. Prunty said, Mr. Williams asked her if she knew where a Mrs. Evans lived. The woman stopped to answer.

“Her kind moment of hesitation would cost her,” Ms. Prunty said.

Mr. Williams forced his way into the apartment, Ms. Prunty said, put the woman in a chokehold, and slapped her cellphone from her hand. Mr. Williams slammed the door behind him, and “her Friday the 13th nightmare began,” Ms. Prunty said.

Mr. Williams turned a clock by the woman’s bed to the wall and made her take off her watch so she would not know what time it was, Ms. Prunty said. He raped her repeatedly and cut her hair because “he wanted to see her face, her fear and humiliation.”

He made her sit in her bathtub, and that was the first time he told her to gouge her eyes, Ms. Prunty said. He punished her for refusing by boiling water in a kettle and throwing it on her, the prosecutor said. The water jolted her so much that she broke through the bonds on her wrist, Ms. Prunty said, as the skin on her chest, torso and thighs blistered. (On hearing this detail, one of the jurors shook his head and covered his mouth.)

“Just kill me! Just kill me!” the woman pleaded, Ms. Prunty said.

Later, after her failed attempt to kill herself with the scissors, Mr. Williams threw a heavy object at the back of her head, cracking her skull, Ms. Prunty said.

Mr. Williams was intent on damaging her vision because, Ms. Prunty said, “a blind witness could never identify her attacker.”

Mr. Williams eventually slit the woman’s eyelids and face with a butcher knife, Ms. Prunty said, but she did not lose her vision. He fastened her legs and arms to a futon, and she lost consciousness.

When she awoke, she again pleaded for him to kill her, but heard no response. He was gone.

Mr. Williams “only stopped when he could no longer feel the scourge of control over another human being,” Ms. Prunty said.

The woman smelled smoke, Ms. Prunty said, so she wriggled her legs free and pulled the futon away from the wall. She used the fire to free her arms, Ms. Prunty said, and then ran through the smoke to her door. It took her several attempts to open it because her hands were limp and numb, Ms. Prunty said.

The woman ran through her hallway seeking help, Ms. Prunty said, “an image of the walking, living dead.”

Found guilty by the way.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/25/ny...yt&oref=slogin

[BallHawk]

That's sickening. That man deserves to die and anybody that can argue anything else is beyond me.

[Zool]

Ahhh rehabilitation. Its working out fucking peachy. Just ask that girl. I'm sure her lips have healed after being glued together.

Seriously how can anyone say putting this guy out of his misery is anything but the right answer? Eliminating repeat offenders would go a long ways.