Folks, if ever you had any doubt about liberals and their agenda with regards to the law and justice, today’s US Supreme Court decision should put those doubts to rest:
The Supreme Court declared Wednesday that executions are too severe a punishment for raping children, despite the “years of long anguish” for victims, in a ruling that restricts the death penalty to murder and crimes against the state.
The court’s 5-4 decision struck down a Louisiana law that allows capital punishment for people convicted of raping children under 12. It spares the only people in the U.S. under sentence of death for that crime — two Louisiana men convicted of raping girls 5 and 8.
The ruling also invalidates laws on the books in five other states that allowed executions for child rape that does not result in the death of the victim.
However devastating the crime to children, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in his majority opinion, “the death penalty is not a proportional punishment for the rape of a child.” His four liberal colleagues joined him, while the four more conservative justices dissented.
Unbelievable! The liberals on the Supreme Court don’t think that the rape of a child is bad enough to warrant capital punishment. Therefore, a man who shoots and kills an intruder in his own home to protect his family can be sentenced to death in some states, but if a man intentionally breaks into a home and rapes the children, he’ll just spend some time in jail (on the taxpayer’s dime). How in the world does this make any sense at all?
Justice Samuel Alito puts this all in prespective in his dissent:
The Court’s final—and, it appears, principal—justification for its holding is that murder, the only crime for which defendants have been executed since this Court’s 1976 death penalty decisions, is unique in its moral depravity and in the severity of the injury that it inflicts on the victim and the public. But the Court makes little attempt to defend these conclusions. With respect to the question of moral depravity, is it really true that every person who is convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death is more morally depraved than every child rapist? Consider the following two cases. In the first, a defendant robs a convenience store and watches as his accomplice shoots the store owner. The defendant acts recklessly, but was not the triggerman and did not intend the killing. In the second case, a previously convicted child rapist kidnaps, repeatedly rapes, and tortures multiple child victims. Is it clear that the first defendant is more morally depraved than the second?
…
With respect to the question of the harm caused by the rape of child in relation to the harm caused by murder, it is certainly true that the loss of human life represents a unique harm, but that does not explain why other grievous harms are insufficient to permit a death sentence. And the Court does not take the position that no harm other than the loss of life is sufficient. The Court takes pains to limit its holding to “crimes against individual persons” and to exclude “offenses against the State,” a category that the Court stretches — without explanation — to include “drug kingpin activity.” But the Court makes no effort to explain why the harm caused by such crimes is necessarily greater than the harm caused by the rape of young children. This is puzzling in light of the Court’s acknowledgment that “[r]ape has a permanent psychological, emotional, and sometimes physical impact on thechild.” As the Court aptly recognizes, “[w]e cannot dismiss the years of long anguish that must be endured by the victim of child rape.”
All citations omitted.
As a result of this decision, you are now guaranteed to see more lawyers like this defending child rapists, all courtesy of the liberals on the court:
A Massachusetts politician and defense attorney has touched off a firestorm with his shocking public vow to torment and “rip apart” child rape victims who take the witness stand if the state legislature passed stiff mandatory sentences for child sex offenders.
Rep. James Fagan, a Democrat, made the comments during debate last month on the state House floor.
“I’m gonna rip them apart,” Fagan said of young victims during his testimony on the bill. “I’m going to make sure that the rest of their life is ruined, that when they’re 8 years old, they throw up; when they’re 12 years old, they won’t sleep; when they’re 19 years old, they’ll have nightmares and they’ll never have a relationship with anybody.”
Fagan said as a defense attorney it would be his duty to do that in order to keep his clients free from a “mandatory sentence of those draconian proportions.”
As if I needed to tell you, this guy is both a Democrat and a trial lawyer. Also, he is the Chairman of the Massachusetts State House Ethics Committee. Yes, that’s right; he is responsible for telling other lawmakers how to conduct themselves.
So, what have we learned today? Well, we’ve learned that liberals like child rapists more than they like the rapist’s victims, families, or the concept of justice. We’ve learned that liberals will bend and twist and mold the law into unrecognizable forms to achieve by judicial fiat what they cannot achieve in the legislatures or the ballot box (elimination of the death penalty, except for unborn children). Finally, we’ve learned that liberal trial lawyers will sink to the lowest forms of human behavior just to make a buck and get their picture in the media.
What do liberal bloggers think of the decision? Well. if this is any indication, they like it fine. I’ll leave you to come to your own conclusions.
Not to put too fine a point on all of this, but if the Obamessiah gets elected in November, you’re probably going to get two or three more justices on the Supreme Court who have the same low-regard for children who are raped and high-regard for child rapists as the 5 clowns who decided this case.
Sleep well.
June 26th, 2008 at 8:07 am
Hey Aquinas, why don’t you come explain to our friend Nick how the Catholic Church agrees with the Supreme Court’s decision. Yes, that ultra-liberal institution in Rome is opposed to the death penalty in all cases. Does that mean that the Pope and all those Catholic priests and nuns “like child rapists more than they like the rapist’s victims, families, or the concept of justice”?
I am opposed to the death penalty for moral, ethical and religious reasons. Not because I “like” people who commit heinous crimes. So please stop insulting me like that, Nick.
There are also many practical reasons for opposing the death penalty, such as the fact that it is expensive, prone to errors that cannot be rectified and it does not serve as a deterrent to other criminals.
Someone who would rape a child has some serious problems. They are not thinking about the consequences of their actions and would not be deterred by the most draconian form of punishment. They should be locked away from decent society. But, at the same time, decent society should not utilize the death penalty.
June 26th, 2008 at 4:05 pm
Rome is opposed to the death penalty in all cases
Not true. True for abortion, an instrinsic evil without exception, but not for capital punishment:
*****
CCC 2267
Assuming that the guilty party’s identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.
If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people’s safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.
Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm - without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself - the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity “are very rare, if not practically non-existent.”
******
But, yes, the conditions that would make capital punishment morally permissable as self-defense are lacking in a society such as ours with SuperMax prisons. And, thank God, we now have life without parole in Texas, so there is no excuse for capital punishment.
You cannot take someone out of a jailed cell in handcuffs, strap him down to a table and inject him with poison to kill him. That is not self-defense. It’s murder, no less than the murder (or child rape) he himself committed. If he would never be released into society again, there is no future threat, either.
This has nothing do with the heinousness of his crime. It has everything to do with the fact that God wills all people to be saved. Jesus came to save sinners, not the righteous. What sinner is worse than a depraved murderer? Who needs more time than anyone to come to repentance? How dare we cut short their time to do so, in opposition to the will of God? Once society has been protected from further murders, by a “life without parole” sentence, then the murderer must be given as much time, and the proper humane conditions, in which to find his salvation through Jesus Christ.
Ezekiel 18:23
“Do I indeed derive any pleasure from the death of the wicked? says the Lord GOD. Do I not rather rejoice when he turns from his evil way that he may live?”
June 26th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
I was reminded of another very disturbing reason why having a death penalty for child rape is a bad idea. While it is doubtful that it would serve as a deterrent, having the death penalty for rape could conceivably encourage the rapist to kill his victim to avoid having a witness.
June 26th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
What you guys fail to realize is this: Anyone one who would intentionally murder another human being as a part of their criminal plan (robbery, rape, etc.) is quite capable of murdering again. In fact, I’d say that this criminal is predisposed to murder again. It won’t matter to the criminal if he is in prison or not; if he decides to murder again, he’ll do it. What this means is that when a criminal is sentenced to death, the system is ensuring that this criminal doesn’t murder anyone else, in other words, in defense of another’s life (self-defense). Thus, in my mind, permissible.
Child rapists are the same kind of animal; once they start, they’re going to keep on going. The only way to stop them is to make them assume room temperature. I mean, liberals love doing things “for the children”, don’t they? Why don’t they want to permanently get rid of people who are convicted of raping children?
June 26th, 2008 at 7:16 pm
It won’t matter to the criminal if he is in prison or not; if he decides to murder again, he’ll do it
If he is sentenced to life in prison without parole, then you mean he will murder a fellow inmate or guard? Regrettable, and certainly occurs, but that’s different from society itself acting in self-defense to execute him preemptively. Prison guards are performing a valuable social function in guarding such miscreants at risk of their life…as do the policemen who apprehended him in the first place. But they are trained, armed and accept the risk as part of their service to society. I don’t agree that someone should be killed rather than permanently incarcerated because they “might” kill someone else in the prison in the future.
But here’s an example where, in my prudential judgment, Church teaching would support capital punishment: Osama bin Laden. Should he be captured, and President Obama (after certifying his habeas corpus rights, of course) sees him sent to prison without parole for life, there would undoubtedly be many, many instances of kidnappings and indiscriminate slaughter performed by Osama’s Muslim followers aimed at forcing his release. Thus, imprisoning Bin Laden would not suffice to keep society safe. He must be executed. Just as Saddam Hussein required execution for similar reasons, and especially due to the likelihood of a violent prison breakout in chaotic post-invasion Iraq. Saddam’s incarceration “for life” could hardly have been guaranteed, as it could here in the States.
As for liberal hypocrisy on the issue, far worse is the inconsistency of those who rightly oppose capital punishment while at the same time supporting abortion. Opposing the killing of the guilty but supporting the killing of the innocent: an absolutely incoherent, inconsistent moral position.
Child rapists are the same kind of animal; once they start, they’re going to keep on going. The only way to stop them is to make them assume room temperature.
Life imprisonment without parole.
June 26th, 2008 at 7:35 pm
“this criminal is predisposed to murder again”
Is that so? In June 2002, the Bureau of Justice Statistics published a study of recidivism in 272,111 prisoners released in 1994. The recidivism rates for those that had committed homicide and were rearrested for homicide was 1.2 percent. So 98.8 percent did not kill again.
And aren’t you just a little concerned about innocent people being convicted? Didn’t you ever read “To Kill A Mockingbird” (or watch the movie)? You think our justice system always gets it right?
The point is that we can remove these people from society and protect the children. Therefore, the death penalty only serves as a tool of vengeance.
June 27th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
Mike, I am a lot less concerned about the rights of convicted felons than I am of the rights of the victims and their families for justice. Yes, every once in a great while someone who is convicted of something turns out to be innocent. However, most of these cases are reversed based on DNA evidence which was not available when the person first went on trial. Today, most people who are convicted of murder are convicted with DNA evidence, therefore reducing the chance of a wrongful conviction about 99.98%.
And in case you forgot, To Kill A Mockingbird was fiction.
My feelings on this matter can be summed up thusly: When it comes to criminals who commit the most egregious of offenses, such as murder, rape, child rape and/or molestation, the death penalty is not only appropriate but necessary in order to protect society in general. Removing such people from the population via life terms in prisons is not sufficient punishment; why should I pay taxes to support these animals while they get thee hots and a cot everyday? Especially in the case of a child rapist or murderer, by committing the crime I believe the criminal has forfeited any rights he had beforehand to his own life. Put bluntly, I see no reason why someone who abuses the most defenseless among us should be entitled to live out the remainder of their life at the taxpayers’ expense.
June 27th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
My feelings on this matter can be summed up thusly
Nonetheless: you cannot kill another human being except in self-defense. Period. No economic rationalizations, no revenge, no deterrence. Can’t do it. No capital punishment. No abortion. No embryo-destroying medical research. No euthanasia. No unjust war. Nope. The Gospel of Life is a coherent moral package.