Posted on 07/03/2008 1:07:28 PM PDT by mojito
When our rulers on the Supreme Court invalidated the State of Louisiana's death penalty for child rapists — in the case appropriately titled Kennedy v. Louisiana, decided June 25 — Justice Kennedy and the Court's liberal bloc insisted that the Eighth Amendment does not mean what it meant when it was adopted. Rather, the question of what is "cruel and unusual" punishment is answered by "the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society."
Such gobbledygook is the mark of Left-liberal hauteur. In an arrested-development society, getting older is not necessarily maturing, and chronological maturation is just as likely to signal devolution as “progress.”
And then there’s the ineffable disassociation with reality: Ivory-tower legal elites chattering about how we’ve “evolved” because they’ve chosen to spare from a constitutional, conspicuously humane, democratically determined capital sentence a grown man whose sexual assault of his eight-year-old step-daughter was so savage a forensic expert described the resulting wounds (which required emergency surgery to save the child’s life) as the worst he had ever witnessed.
But most nauseating is the smarm with which our self-determination is gradually eroded. The evolving standards blah, blah, blah is not a legal test. It is for five justices exactly what those justices gave the child-rapist: a license to mutilate. How insulting to our collective intelligence that we’re all supposed to go along as if we don’t get that. Don’t you feel good about yourself? You’re evolving — or, better, being evolved.
(Excerpt) Read more at article.nationalreview.com ...
McCarthy really takes Kennedy and the liberal majority to task in this excellent article.
The Eighth Amendment does uses the word "unusual," so there is at least a plausible argument that something which was usual in 1789 but no longer is usual, is unconstitutional.
Cutting people's limbs off was a punishment for crime in those days (note the 5th Amendment's language about a criminal defendant being "in jeopardy of life or limb"). If Congress passed a law saying that the IRS could cut the hand off a tax evader, would you agree that that was constitutional?
Shouldn’t this reasoning be the basis for other lawsuits? Wouldn’t I be able to cite these rulings to support my violating a contract, etc. by claiming that what the original contract actually said is no longer valid as written since time has passed and things have changed or “evolved”? Absurd.
I agree with the SCOTUS ruling. We have people killing other people and getting 20 years in prison. When they start executing people for murder instead of prison terms then and only then will I support execution for rapists.
What Kennedy has adopted is this entirely nebulous new standard of “evolving decency,” which is no standard at all other than what Justice Kennedy happens to think at the moment.
I would not call it a “maturing society.” More like “degenerating.”
Clear in this decision is the ever-increasing power of homosexual groups in the US. These are people who favor child rape...NAMBLA being a prime example. So execute one of their own? No way such a law was going into effect.
“I agree with the SCOTUS ruling.”
I do, too.
These sickos can’t stop molesting children. If the penalty for molestation is the same as for murder, why not just kill the kid when done with her or him? Death penalty either way.
Good point. Never thought of it that way, but you are right.
“The Eighth Amendment does uses the word “unusual,” so there is at least a plausible argument that something which was usual in 1789 but no longer is usual, is unconstitutional.”
Do you know what the word “and” means? The quote is “cruel AND unusual”, not simply “unusual”. The founders put the word “and” in the constitution so that one Supreme Court could not simply create a situation where something became “unusual” by a determination by a prior Supreme Court ruling. The Justices are to consider “Cruel”, as well as, “unusual” in making their decision.
The US Constitution does not say “cruel or unusual”, it says “cruel AND unusual punishments inflicted”.
The thinking behind this was “Let the punishment fit the crime”.
I have a view of the death penalty that I have never heard anyone else express. Not only do I believe death for a rapist of children is appropriate but I don’t support any penalty for attempted murder that is less than the penalty for murder. Why should a person who intends to murder but is lousy at the job not receive the same penalty as someone who succeeds at what he is trying to do? I find it strange that in this instance the penalty is determined not by intent but by success of failure while in many other situations intent is the determinant, for instance if my brakes fail and I lose control of my vehicle and the result is someone’s death I would hardly receive the same penalty as someone who deliberately commits vehicular homicide, in this case the result is the same but only intent matters, this seems to me to be the opposite of the murder or attempted murder question.
If the penalty for molestation is the same as for murder, why not just kill the kid when done with her or him? Death penalty either way.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I understand the sentiment but the other side of the coin is that many of these monsters will kill the victim regardless of penalty. People who do these things are not weighing the risks against the rewards, if they were they wouldn’t be child rapists to begin with, they have already decided that the law means nothing to them.
There is nothing either cruel or unususal about the penalty of death. Those who use that argument are fishing for an excuse to devalue the existence of this little girl and render less grotesque the vile acts perpetrated against her. As usual with the left, social norms must be turned upside down in this evil nation of the United States.
I think the SC made a good call but I really don’t have a problem putting child rapists down.
Ideally, they would be made to wear a “I raped and murdered a 10-year-old child” T-shirt every day they are alive in prison.
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