Betraying Trusts

Rape and Death:

It's not uncommon for the SCOTUS to come up with something I think is flatly wrong, so it is no surprise to see it done today. Today they held that raping a child can't be a capital crime.

I would suggest, given recidivism rates in child molestation, that molestation of children under 13 should always be a capital offense. Furthermore, given that prison has proven to be a failure at rehabilitation, I see no reason that forcible rape, even of adults, should not have death as a potential penalty at the discretion of judge and jury. Rape is every bit as awful as murder, and may be far crueler. More, unlike in murder cases, the victim has to continue to live with the crime.

There is no reason they should also have to live with the rapist.

The Eighth Amendment certain did not prevent the execution of rapists, even adults, "where the victim's life was not taken" at the time of its ratification. It was only in this century that the SCOTUS -- not the Congress or the several states -- decided that was unacceptable.

Now the SCOTUS says we must "not expand" the use of the death penalty to child rapists; but this is no expansion, it is a simple restoration of how things were actually done at the time of the passage of the Eighth. The court has been acting unreasonably on the point for decades, and is getting worse as time goes along.