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Home / Supreme Court Rejects Death Penalty for Raping ChildrenSupreme Court Rejects Death Penalty for Raping Children
Last Updated on Wednesday, 25 June 2008 09:56 Written by rslcpol Wednesday, 25 June 2008 09:56
From the AP:
Forty-five states ban the death penalty for any kind of rape, and the other five states allow it for child rapists. Montana, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas allow executions in such cases if the defendant had previously been convicted of raping a child.
The court struggled over how to apply standards laid out in decisions barring executions for the mentally retarded and people younger than 18 when they committed murder. In those cases, the court cited trends in the states away from capital punishment.
In this case, proponents of the Louisiana law said the trend was toward the death penalty, a point mentioned by Justice Samuel Alito in his dissent.