Should We Kill the Kiddie Rapists?

Exciting night in Portland. NBA Draft, lots of news on the Blazers front.

On most NBA Draft nights (like last year), I'd be going crazy with excitement over the team and what's going on. It's a time of great promise and great hope.

But, instead, my mind is stuck on something it was seizing upon this morning: the recent US Supreme Court decision ruling that capital punishment shouldn't apply to people who rape children.

Background: as most of my actual readers know, I'm a lawyer. I'm also a person, so any legal insights I have are tempered by my human frailties (emotion and irrational, illogical thinking, for instance). Further, I've read a nutshell summary of the opinion created by a law student at Willamette, so don't think for a minute that I've read the actual opinion, the facts of this particular case, or the legal reasoning involved as applied to the case.

What I know: a guy raped his step-daughter, who was under the age of 12. He may or may not have done it. He was convicted and, under state law, sentenced to death. The Supreme Court essentially found that killing a person for rape was disproportionate to the crime and created too many problems to allow it to stand.

The case is a messy one to serve as a foundation for my premise, even with the scant amount of knowledge that I have. The premise being that few crimes are more deserving of the death penalty than raping a child. So, I discuss generally, and not in the particulars of this case.

I went into my office today and decided to launch the rare idealogical bomb to see what happened. I commonly rest on my philosophical laurels and lead a live-and-let-live sort of existence. Everyone's free to think or feel what they want, provided it doesn't create a mess for everyone else at work, because I'm not to judge them and I expect them not to judge me on the basis of our variant opinions, ideals, or beliefs.

But I was so beside myself with consternation at the Court's ruling that I decided to share it with my peers.

One was predictably on my side, as she always is in any real debate. Another was, again predictably, contrary to me, as we tend to have a different idealogical bent, despite being very close friends who respect and trust eachother inherently. The last, a college student interning with us, was a wild card, as she's only been around for a week.

I forwarded my position: the Supreme Court called it wrong, and child rapists should be fair game in a society that condones capital punishment. My agreeable peer agreed, as I previously alluded. My disagreeable peer gave good reasons for his disagreement.

His primary thesis is that capital punishment is wrong, that it constitutes us playing god (despite he, himself, being somewhat agnostic), and that the whole freaking system of capital punishment is out of order anyway. The intern primarily jumped on the faulty-system bandwagon.

I, of course, have to agree that the system is out of order. There are people subject to the death penalty that shouldn't be. I allowed for this truth in my argument.

But, I opined, if our society and our courts are going to deem it appropriate to terminate some criminals' lives for some crimes they've committed, then certainly child rape should make the list.

My main thrust in the argument was that few crimes are as injurious to society and to the actual victim as raping them. Although I didn't voice it, I was thinking more particularly of adults in a position of trust, such as parentals/teachers/baby-sitters, taking advantage of the youths in their care. But, certainly, any rape of a child is among the most reprehensible of all crimes. In fact, I think it's worse to rape a kid than to murder someone, because while the murder of someone has the effect of cutting off their future, the rape of a child has the effect of completely marring, scarring, and destroying a future that they must live through.

To his credit, my friend saw my points regarding how child rape was worse than many of the murders committed to get people on death row. But he opined that the death penalty's aim in these cases was to appease ourselves as opposed to creating justice. It was to make us feel better.

He is, of course, right. By killing a person, you remove their capacity to reform, to learn from their wrongs, to change. But, by killing that person, you let people know how their conduct is viewed, you state in the strongest possible way to the victim that they are valued and protected by society, and you, in no uncertain terms, mete out the highest degree of allowable punishment available for an extremely high degree of evil that has been committed. And, in acknowledgment of my friend's concern, it absolutely is a way to exorcise the rage we feel towards these people for what they've done.

We ended up debating the death penalty, ultimately, and essentially agreeing to disagree. Thus is the nature of a reasoned society debating openly about various views.

But I still ask, is the Court right? Should capital punishment be reserved to only murderers?