IPFS
Fascist Nation
Powell Gammill
More About: Death PenaltySupreme Court saved some kid's lives today (updated)
The Supreme Court saved the lives
of many raped children in the United States today. Politicians, ever
on the lookout for ways to prove how tough they are on crime from time
to time pass legislation ensuring the initiator of force will murder
their victim(s) rather than leave them behind sobbing, terrified and
scarred. They do this for votes.
Such has been the historical case when the rape of a woman, or rape for the third time, or rape of a child, et cetera has brought about the death penalty upon conviction. As any criminal well knows, it is much, much harder to prove a crime without a victim's testimony. If the penalties for murder are the same as the crime one has perpetrated, then murdering your victim makes perfect rational sense to eliminate the witness of your crime.
How many strangled or stabbed rape victims have been left behind at some Congressman's behest? Plenty. Which is why those laws came noisily and eventually went quietly -- because no Congressman wants to be seen as soft on crime -- after the innocent bodies had piled up along with problematic trials.
So politicians do what they always do; pass legislation, grandly puff up their chests in front of a group of supplicant media and plan on letting the courts strike down their unconstitutional legislation.
Such has been the historical case when the rape of a woman, or rape for the third time, or rape of a child, et cetera has brought about the death penalty upon conviction. As any criminal well knows, it is much, much harder to prove a crime without a victim's testimony. If the penalties for murder are the same as the crime one has perpetrated, then murdering your victim makes perfect rational sense to eliminate the witness of your crime.
How many strangled or stabbed rape victims have been left behind at some Congressman's behest? Plenty. Which is why those laws came noisily and eventually went quietly -- because no Congressman wants to be seen as soft on crime -- after the innocent bodies had piled up along with problematic trials.
So politicians do what they always do; pass legislation, grandly puff up their chests in front of a group of supplicant media and plan on letting the courts strike down their unconstitutional legislation.
Then they get to hold
another press conference, beat their chests at the liberal,
outrageously soft on crime judges.
Meanwhile the weak and defenseless, such as kids, pay for those votes. Remember that the next time you meet a legislator, or think your legislator, governor or mayor is pretty good.
Meanwhile the weak and defenseless, such as kids, pay for those votes. Remember that the next time you meet a legislator, or think your legislator, governor or mayor is pretty good.
And in case you had not heard, the U.S. Supreme Court just ruled the death penalty is for murderers only. As much as I oppose the death penalty, I am glad of this for the lives it will save. It blocks the temptation to expand the death penalty into crimes other than murder, to go after say businessmen engaged in non-tax generating exchanges, also known as "drug kingpins." Oh wait, we already do....
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There is a definite trend line: following nullification of the death penalty for the rape of an adult woman (Coker v. Georgia, 1977, for murder by a mentally impaired individual (Atkins v. Virginia, 2002), and murder by a minor (Roper v. Simmons, 2005), the options for using the death penalty continue to narrow.
As part of the Louisiana decision, the Court made it definite that no death sentence would be upheld for a crime against an individual, when the victim is not killed. And, it went further, suggesting that the present majority will be, at the very least, deeply reluctant to allow capital punishment for any new crime, or for a crime for which the death sentence has not been imposed for many decades (as was the case with child rapists).
The Court, as Justice Kennedy wrote Wednesday, has spent 32 years
laying down rules to limit the use of capital punishment, to avoid its
“arbitrary imposition” when the crime was murder. The Court, he added,
would not now begin “the same process for crimes for which no one has
been executed in more than 40 years.” That, he said, would “require
experimentation in an area where a failed experiment would result in
the execution of individuals undeserving of the death penalty.
Evolving standards of decency are difficult to reconcile with a regime
that seeks to expand the death penalty to an area where standards to
confine its use are indefinite and obscure.”
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UPDATE: Can I call it or what.? 24 hours later and I read this AP story:
"Anybody in the country who cares about children should be outraged
that we have a Supreme Court that would issue a decision like this,"
said Alabama Attorney General Troy King, a Republican. The justices, he
said, are "creating a situation where the country is a less safe place
to grow up."