Catholic Death Penalty Foe Commends Court Decision in Rapist's Case

A leading Catholic advocate against capital punishment commended the U.S. Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling June 25 barring the death penalty for anyone convicted of raping a child.

The decision said the death penalty was reserved for murder and crimes against the state such as treason, espionage and terrorism.

Although the opinion in Kennedy v. Louisiana did not deny the pain and suffering inflicted in childhood rape, the court found the death penalty was not a "proportionate penalty for the crime" and thus amounted to "cruel and unusual punishment" in violation of the Eighth Amendment.

In a June 25 e-mail, Frank McNeirney, national coordinator for Catholics Against Capital Punishment based in Bethesda, Md., told Catholic News Service that "the court would have made the system even more disproportionate and unfair" if it had extended "eligibility for execution to people who commit crimes that do not result in the loss of human life."

The court's decision struck down a 1995 Louisiana law that allows the death penalty for people convicted of raping children under the age of 12. The ruling will spare the lives of two Louisiana men -- the only people in the United States under a death penalty sentence for a crime that did not include homicide. They will receive life sentences without parole.

The case before the Supreme Court was the appeal of one of the Louisiana inmates, Patrick Kennedy, who was convicted and sentenced to death in 2003 for raping his 8-year-old stepdaughter. The Louisiana Supreme Court upheld Kennedy's conviction and rejected his challenge to the constitutionality of his sentence.

In a 1977 case, the court had prohibited capital punishment for rape; in that case, the 16-year-old victim was married and had the legal status of an adult.

In the 2008 decision, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority, said there was "a distinction between intentional first-degree murder on the one hand and nonhomicide crimes against individual persons," even "devastating" crimes such as the rape of a child.

"The incongruity between the crime of child rape and the harshness of the death penalty poses risks of over-punishment and counsels against a constitutional ruling that the death penalty can be expanded to include this offense," Kennedy wrote.

He also noted that when the law "punishes by death, it risks its own sudden descent into brutality, transgressing the constitutional commitment to decency and restraint."

Kennedy was joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Samuel Alito denounced the decision as too "sweeping." He was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.