No Death Penalty For Child Rapists

SUPREME COURT (AP) - The Supreme Court has stuck down a law
allowing the execution of people convicted of a raping a child.
In a 5-4 vote, the court said the Louisiana law allowing the
death penalty to be imposed in such cases violates the
Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
The case involved convicted for the rape of his 8-year-old
stepdaughter.
Justice Anthony Kennedy and his four liberal colleagues wrote
that the death penalty is not a "proportional punishment" for the
rape of a child. The four more conservative justices dissented.
There has not been an execution in the United States for a crime
that did not also involve the death of the victim in 44 years.
The Supreme Court banned executions for rape in 1977 in a case
in which the victim was an adult woman.
Forty-five states ban the death penalty for any kind of rape,
and the other five states allow it for child rapists. But only two
people -- both in Louisiana -- have been condemned to death for a
rape that was not accompanied by a killing.

(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)