Strike One…Strike Two…

First came the 5-4 decision to grant enemy combatants Constitutional rights. Now, the SCOTUS hands down another 5-4 decision making the death penalty for convicted pedophiles unconstitutional.

The 5-to-4 decision overturned death penalty laws in Louisiana and five other states. The only two men in the country who have been sentenced to death for the crime of child rape, both in Louisiana, will receive new sentences of life without parole.

The court went beyond the question in the case to rule out the death penalty for any individual crime — as opposed to “offenses against the state,� such as treason or espionage — “where the victim’s life was not taken.�

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority, said there was “a distinction between intentional first-degree murder on the one hand and non-homicide crimes against individual persons,� even such “devastating� crimes as the rape of a child, on the other.

Obviously, Justice Kennedy and the majority have never been in the shoes of a parent whose child was raped.

Although I don’t feel that a federal death penalty for rape is necessary, I strongly believe that the federal government should leave decisions for state penal violations to the individual states.

Now that the states can’t consider the death penalty for criminals with “short eyes”, the fate of such reprobates might rest solely with the internal moral codes of the general prison population.

Now, will there another 5-4 on the Washington D.C. gun ban to be handed down tomorrow?

Update (6/26): No strike three, thank God. D.C. residents (as well as all law-abiding Americans) can now use guns for self-defense.

Filed under Commentary, Headlines |