Supreme Court: Child Rape
Today the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against a Louisiana law allowing the death penalty to be utilized in child rape cases, the majority saying that invoking the death penalty violates the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Simply stated:
"The death penalty is not a proportional punishment for the rape of a child."
- Justice Anthony Kennedy
Think about that.
You don't have to be dragged into a discussion of the legalese; you don't have to explore constitutional history or judicial precedents. You don't even have to get into a discussion on the justification for the death penalty. The conversation begins and ends with "proportional punishment for the rape of a child".
I fucking dare you to fathom that.
Just attempt to enter the mindset in which "proportion" is the mechanism at which one grasps to assess child rape. Pretend your way through the thought process which begins with "What is the approximate quantification of harm which rape imposes on a child?" Locate the point of estrangement at which one must stand in order to apply "cruel and unusual" to the punishment before the act.
What is the "proportional punishment", Anthony Kennedy? What legal, judicial, bullshit fabrication can you shoddily concoct which would place upon a 43 year old man the same, proportional, harm he inflicted in an eight year old girl when he raped her. An eight year old girl sorting Girl Scout cookies in her garage, Anthony Kennedy. A child.
It is beyond unfathomable, beyond wretched, beyond deplorable. It is beyond death, beyond murder, Anthony Kennedy. To be an eight year old girl sorting cookies in your garage one moment and in the next moment to be a sexual object for your stepfather? QUANTIFY THAT, Anthony Kennedy! Articulate a proportional scenario to which we can subject that 43 year old man! Identify the particular legal qualities manifest in child rape and apply them to your delusional equation which provides a neat little package of punishment tied up with a fucking bow!!
You can't do it, Anthony Kennedy; no one can. You can't articulate rape, can't explain it, can't understand it. There is no proportion to be created or assessment to be made. You just kill him.
You kill him. You kill him and every person like him. You hunt them down, you gather them up, and you kill each and every one. You do not try to understand rape, to quantify rape, to concoct some proportional punishment to rape. He raped an eight year old girl. He dies.
It won't make the eight year old girl feel better. It won't even begin to heal or compensate for what he did to her; no one and no thing can heal or compensate for that. Rape is beyond healing or compensation. But attempts at healing, compensation are not the reasons why you kill him.
You kill him because when he saw an eight year old girl sorting Girl Scout cookies in a garage he raped her.
You kill him because rape is worse than death.
30 comments:
Don't make any fucking jokes.
not making a joke.
The problem with this is it's entirely emotional.. as such a repsonse should be.
But the Judge's desicion is correct. Even if the case for that desicion is wrong.
Rape has just been classified as a weapon of war. Are you advocating death for conscripts? For child soldiers?
For that matter.. what if the scenario is reversed? Lolita or "Don't Stand So Close" style?
Your righteous rage at the issue is venting itself on the judge for doing his job.
A judge's job is to weigh the action of a punishment against that of the crime. If, and I'm willing to say it is, rape is unquantifiable, then you open the case for murder to be unquantifiable as well.
You can go off on the judge for bad reasoning and bad linguistics. You can even go off on him for a bad judgement. But don't go off on him for the crime, and sadly, that's what you're doing here. You're arguing the crime, and applying it to the Judge's desicion.
know what?
I'm wrong.
I'm going back and rereading, to be sure of what I'm thinking.
and I'm wrong.
You aren't arguing the crime and venting on the judge.
You're venting, and you're sheilding yourself from criticism you don't want.
which is fine in this case.
One reason I stand behind the decision to revoke the death penalty in ANY rape case is because it gives the perpetrator no reason to not kill the victim. If a precedent is set that child rape results in the death penalty then it is in the perpetrator's best interests to just snuff out his victim so as to hide the evidence. Were the evidence to surface, he will be looking at the death penalty anyways.
Kyle just made the point I was originally trying to get at and totally lost with my first response, and he made it much more succinctly than I could.
The judge's position has to weigh the issue without emotion.. take in aspects and consequences of the ruling, how it qill impact further crime, how it will impact the society, etc.
gah.
This is one of those weird times when I agree with what Alito says:
Justice Samuel Alito wrote the dissent, saying, "The harm that is caused to the victims and to society at large by the worst child rapist is grave." He was supported by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.
Alito also wrote that the majority ruled against the death penalty "no matter how young the child, no matter how many times the child is raped, no matter how many children the perpetrator rapes, no matter how sadistic the crime, no matter how much physical or psychological trauma is inflicted and no matter how heinous the perpetrator's criminal record may be."
Couple that with the fact that we put people to death for treason and espionage and I fail to see why rape does not merit death.
"One reason I stand behind the decision to revoke the death penalty in ANY rape case is because it gives the perpetrator no reason to not kill the victim."
I don't think our policy ought to be based upon the reasoning capacities of a rapist. If the guy is raping an eight year old I doubt that afterwords he pauses and thinks, "Now, if I kill her I would get the death penalty...but if I don't kill her I'll just be sent to prison. Well, as a result of this cost-benefit analysis I shall not kill her."
I think this ruling comes out of a lack of appreciation for the impact rape has on an individual and those around them. And if fucking Samuel Alito can see that I've no idea what is wrong with the rest of them.
The stance of "at least he didn't kill her" mostly misses the severity of rape and its impact. I think it very odd to put rape below murder on a ranking of severity.
"take in aspects and consequences of the ruling, how it qill impact further crime, how it will impact the society, etc."
Sure, but I don't think "if you rape someone we're going to fucking kill you" is necessarily a problematic stance.
There are a lot of things involved in the discussion. Why do we punish people, how do we assign punishment, what impacts to punishment have. Then we have to look at the death penalty as a whole and look at its utility and the role it plays.
But I'm happy to ignore all that and utilize "kill rapists" as a fairly self-explanatory guideline for public policy.
And I've no idea what utility that stance even has other than it would result in dead rapists rather than imprisoned rapists.
The issue here would be that rape doesn't have uniform effects.
That is to say, there are those who will be able to cope and function fully, and those who won't..
In acknowledging how severe it's impact CAN be, don't make the mistake of stating the case that it IS in every case.
The odd thing here is that I can agree as well with Alito, but looking at what he's saying and why? He's arguing for extenuating circumstances against a blanket ban. He's arguing for relativity, and I have to agree with that.
It's... interesting to me.. that you agree as well.. in the sense that you do your damnedest to avoid such things.
Of course it's problematic. Are you going to kill a mentally retarded delusional man who overpowers and rapes.. say.. an orderly.
What about the man who's falsely convicted? Such as those who are being freed on DNA evidence now?
The problem here is two seperate, but inextricably linked questions. Is death ever an acceptible punishment for heinous crime, and is it ever acceptible for a failable society to condemn a member to death?
I know you were looking to avoid the "death penalty as right or wrong" here.. but it's fundamentally what you're asking..
The criminal justice system does not make any sense. Let's just accept that as fact. The plethora of nuances involved in everyday situations is more than simply indicative of the problems which result from attempts at crafting systems to penalize certain behaviors.
So, ignoring the gigantic convoluted mess that is the justice system let's look at this:
"The death penalty is not a proportional punishment for the rape of a child."
That sentence is based in insanity; the sort of insanity which occurs when one distances one's self and conceptualizes actions to such a degree that one fundamentally loses one's humanity.
This is from the CNN article:
"Kennedy was convicted of sexually assaulting his stepdaughter in her bed. The attack caused severe emotional trauma, internal injuries and bleeding to the child, requiring extensive surgery, Louisiana prosecutors said.
In the majority opinion, Anthony Kennedy acknowledged "the victim's fright, the sense of betrayal, and the nature of her injuries caused more prolonged physical and mental suffering than, say, a sudden killing by an unseen assassin."
But the justice -- supported by Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer -- wrote that when determining what punishment the Eighth Amendment prohibits, "evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society" must be taken into account.
After a review of the "history of the death penalty for this and other nonhomicide crimes, current state statutes and new enactments ... we conclude there is a national consensus against capital punishment for the crime of child rape," Anthony Kennedy wrote."
That's insane. "More prolonged physical and mental suffering than, say, a sudden killing by an unseen assassin" is met with a platitude about "evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society"?!
I'm sure you can delve into the legal system and through that construct some rhetorical argument upon which you can base the ruling. But I'd rather focus on the eight year old girl. And when I do that the only reasonable response is to take the guy who raped her and run him over with a combine about thirty thousand times after slicing, salting, and setting fire to his dick.
And that's what I was getting at from the beginning Jay... if you want to focus on the girl, focus on her.
Not the ruling. You said it yourself, the ruling won't help her, either way.
I'm pretty much in agreement with you, at least in my gut. But I'm calling out your sloppy technique in your argument here.
For two reasons, one because if you're going to make the case, make it strongly. The situation calls for it.
And two, because it's one of the few good examples of you, ignoring a rational basis for an action, in favor of the irrational gut response. Which.. is kinda sad, because I'd love to examine this in lighter circumstances.
Worse, it seems like it's only you, I, and Kyle this week. So if the topic's not sparking conversation, it's going to be a DEAD week.
To me "More prolonged physical and mental suffering than, say, a sudden killing by an unseen assassin" is a pretty ludicrous thing to say.
You know, stubbing my toe has "More prolonged physical and mental suffering than, say, a sudden killing by an unseen assassin". Does this mean I would rather be shot in the head than stub my toe? No fucking way. A comparison can not be made between homicide and rape because they are on such absolutely different levels.
One can recover from being raped, albeit a long road, and not possible for all, but it is still a possibility. You let me know when medical and/or psychological sciences come up with even a treatment to reduce the effects of death.
I won't be holding my breath.
But Kyle, that's the key! Holding your breath!
I do not think that death is the worst thing that can happen to someone. So the argument that any form of existence is preferable to death is nonsense.
Which may not be what you mean, but I understand "A comparison can not be made between homicide and rape because they are on such absolutely different levels." to have the implication that death is this other sort of thing that is worse than everything else.
... if Death is not the worst that can happen to a person.. then why not punish the rapist with something worse than it?
The point of death as punishment for rape is not to impose on the rapist some proportional punishment for the sake of some universal balance. The point is to make them no longer exist.
Why? Honestly, what benefit does that provide?
And how is that benefit unable to be provided by alternative means?
The handful of benefits I can come up with can be achieved seperately.. so.. .. curious.
Thought you might like this take on the subject:
But the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault, a nonprofit victim advocacy group representing 80 rape crisis centers, applauded the ruling.
"Most child sexual abuse victims are abused by a family member or close family friend," the group said in a statement. "The reality is that child victims and their families don't want to be responsible for sending a grandparent, cousin or long time family friend to death row."
The last thing this girl needs is to have the psychological scars of her father being sentenced to death for something he did to her. She will blame herself and it will only make the situation worse for the victim.
"The reality is that child victims and their families don't want to be responsible for sending a grandparent, cousin or long time family friend to death row."
I had not thought of that. Mostly because I know what "responsible" means and can properly apply responsibility in this situation.
I would think that part of her accepting that the rape was not her fault would include the realization that the punishment on the guy is not her fault.
"Honestly, what benefit does that provide?
And how is that benefit unable to be provided by alternative means?"
That's a pretty generic argument against nigh-any particular punishment. The answer to the first question will always be subjective, so that conversation never ends. The answer to the second question is just a question of creativity based upon the subjective answer to the first.
And as much fun as that is let's just kill the fucker.
Any chance you can cover what benefits an execution brings?
I'm seriously curious and trying to figure out if that answer's not actually just dodging the question...
I'm really stuck on that Texas Association Against Sexual Assault thing.
One of the first ideas to impress upon a rape victim is the fact that what happened is not their fault, that they are not responsible.
"child victims and their families don't want to be responsible for sending a grandparent, cousin or long time family friend to death row." is only an issue that would occur if that "you are not responsible" message is not communicated and accepted by the victim.
That's quite odd.
"Any chance you can cover what benefits an execution brings?"
To whom?
If you look at the wikipedia page for capital punishment debate you'll see many of the issues involved. And while wikipedia is stupid, in this instance it does provide a glimpse of how difficult this issue is.
But, execution benefits off the top of my head?
- acts as a deterrent
- imposes justice
- creates a balance (eye for an eye mentality)
- makes victim feel better
- Prevents same person from committing similar crime again
- costs less than housing criminals
- complies with will of the people
Those sorts of things.
I don't necessarily agree with all of them. They're just answers.
Indeed.. that's what I was looking for..
becuase short of the cost issue, I couldn't come up with one that wasn't equally served by incarceration..
I don't grant the premise that incarceration is the be-all-end-all form of punishment that fits every crime.
It's really absurd when you think about it. Person smokes pot? Lock them in a box. Person rapes an 8 year old girl? Lock them in a box. Person steals a car? Lock them in a box. Box locking hardly fits the crimes. It's just what we do.
Think about incarceration for a while and try to figure out what it is. It's some combination of denying freedom and removal from society.
It's odd that we use it as a go-to punishment. I mean, if we're not going to kill the fucker we need to at least burn his dick and balls off. Then kill him.
I wasn't saying it was the end-all be-all...
On the other hand, without the cost factor, I wasn't seeing where it didn't accomplish the same goals as execution.
I was honestly asking the difference is all. Though.. Castration does raise another punishment option.
Hmn.
"One of the first ideas to impress upon a rape victim is the fact that what happened is not their fault, that they are not responsible."
While it may be true that we TRY to impress these ideas upon them, they rarely stick. In the case of a divorce, parents are constantly telling their children that it isn't the children's fault, but that doesn't stop those same children from blaming themselves. Now, think about how a death penalty imposed upon a child's own father for something that the child was a part of, albeit through no fault nor choice of her own, would affect that child.
Physical castration, in our modern society is considered "cruel and unusual punishment." Chemical castration, however, is commonly used as a punishment for child molesters who are no longer in prison.
Yeah, I know..
I'm just musing.. well.. the ethics of punishment, I guess, now.
Because.. it's telling that J emotionally wants death, or something worse..
Just thoughts..
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