Evolving Standards of Decency/My Delusion

I have shit buckets full of bricks today, enough to build a stairway to the moon and back, after reading this in the news:

The death penalty is unconstitutional as a punishment for the rape of a child, a sharply divided Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday. The 5-to-4 decision overturned death penalty laws in Louisiana and five other states. The only two men in the country who have been sentenced to death for the crime of child rape, both in Louisiana, will receive new sentences of life without parole. The court went beyond the question in the case to rule out the death penalty for any individual crime — as opposed to “offenses against the state,” like treason or espionage — “where the victim’s life was not taken.”

Patrick Kennedy raped his 8-year-old stepdaughter. He injured her so badly that she was literally torn apart: "A laceration to the left wall of the vagina had separated her cervix from the back of her vagina, causing her rectum to protrude into the vaginal structure. Her entire perineum was torn from the posterior fourchette to the anus. The injuries required emergency surgery." After he violated her, he "washed her up," eliminating any attempts at collecting DNA evidence. Then he left her there for nearly 2 hours, bleeding, while he first called in sick to work and then called to brag to a co-worker that his stepdaughter had "just become a young lady," before finally calling 911. Finally, he convinced her to lie about who had hurt her, blaming two boys. Eventually, she was able to come forward with the truth, that it was indeed her stepfather who had raped her. He was tried and convicted by a jury of his peers, sentenced to death in accordance with state law. In the typical manner of self-serving, arrogant, ME-centered "American" entitlement, he committed the crime then decided he did not want to "do the time."

He wanted his cake and his stepdaughter's, too.

Putting a cherry on top of this coup de grace of American Justice, the Supreme Court of the United States decided that they wanted their cake AND the States' along with frosting, sprinkles, and even the bowl to mix the batter. In one fell swoop, Justices Kennedy, Stevens, Ginsberg, Breyer, and Souter declared null and void not only a rapist's sentence but the will of the People of the State of Louisiana as represented by the jurors who unanimously rendered the verdict and determined death was the appropriate punishment under the law.

The Will of the People. What a powerful concept.

Dude is hollering that a death sentence is not "proportional" to the crime of child rape, that it is "cruel and unusual" under the 8th Amendment, and this argument was upheld by the Supreme Court. Let us try to break this thing down into some basic elements:

The 8th Amendment. This amendment was created to prevent the FEDERAL government from instituting "cruel and unusual punishment" for FEDERAL crimes and yada yada. It was not until the passage of the 14th Amendment that this prohibition extended to the States; prior to that, it was largely ignored. I have not seen Defendant Kennedy's petition to the court, but Justice Kennedy's opinion states "Patrick Kennedy, the petitioner here, seeks to set aside his death sentence under the Eighth Amendment." This statement, to me, indicates that the petitioner was seeking relief ONLY under the 8th - not the 8th in conjunction with the 14th; the Court appears to have taken care of this oversight for him, though. I am neither an attorney nor a jurist, so I really have no idea whether that is within their authority or not, and it is a done deal anyhow. . . legal precedent has been set.

Cruelty. By definition, cruel means: 1. Disposed to inflict pain or suffering. 2. Causing suffering; painful. Applying the definition of cruelty, any punishment proscribed by the courts is inherently cruel, no matter what said punishment is and for what crime. By imposing punishment, we (society via the courts) are deliberately inflicting harm upon the offender. They will suffer as a result of our sanction, somehow: "I suffer emotionally, being separated from my home, family, work, community." "I suffer (or risk suffering) physical abuse or injury at the hands of other inmates and/or guards, up to and including death." The fact that the offender inflicted cruelty upon their victim is irrelevant; the 8th Amendment does not address victims' rights, only the transgressor's. The 14th Amendment affords "equal protection" under the law but, again, is not addressing victims and their protection per se but due process for the offender. The victim is, again, irrelevant.



Unusual. What exactly was meant by this when it was built into the Bill of Rights? What makes a punishment unusual? Once upon a time, punishments of yore were brought to America from England, when we were far less "civilized." We practiced capital punishment and corporal punishment. Throughout our illustrious history, we have put men to death for bestiality, hung murderers, and even burned 'em at the stake. Over the years, we "evolved" to more civilized means of execution: Electric chairs and gas chambers and eventually a shot to make you go to sleep like a sick dog. In the beginning though, there was a conscious effort on the part of the Framers to ensure that we did not descend into barbarism with impalement, boiling, crucifixion, or dismemberment. The unusual aspect of "unusual," though, is regional. Caning is banned in "developed" societies but still used in many cultures around the globe. Administered properly, it is not "cruel"; and because it is still widely practiced, it is not at all unusual. You will not see it here, though, because it is "barbaric."

Proportional to the Crime. This aspect, logically, probably makes sense to the Justices who rendered the opinion that death is not a suitable punishment for the crime of child rape in which the child did not die and in which the intention was not murder of the child. Emotionally, it is a bomb waiting to explode. This man, at 38 years old, viciously raped an 8-year-old girl, EVISCERATING her and leaving her without treatment (in which case she certainly could have bled to death or developed sepsis, leading to her death - would that have changed the outcome of the decision made by the SCOTUS?), then trying to cover up his crime with manipulation and deceit. Had it been my daughter disemboweled in a rape by a sexual predator (Kennedy had sexually abused another child at the age of 8 but was not prosecuted for that as the girl did not disclose the abuse and did not press charges), regardless of and especially in view of the fact that he was her own stepfather, he probably would have been "disappeared so good" that even God would never find him, and I would still be standing there on the Judgment Day arguing with Him over it, but I digress. As cited in the Court's opinion:

Whether this requirement has been fulfilled is determined not by the standards that prevailed when the Eighth Amendment was adopted in 1791 but by the norms that “currently prevail.” Atkins, supra, at 311. The Amendment “draw[s] its meaning from the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.” Trop v. Dulles, 356 U.S. 86, 101 (1958) (plurality opinion). This is because “[t]he standard of extreme cruelty is not merely descriptive, but necessarily embodies a moral judgment. The standard itself remains the same, but its applicability must change as the basic mores of society change.” Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 382 (1972) (Burger, C. J., dissenting).

We have grown and evolved as a society and our cultural norms and values - our moral judgments - have changed with the times. We no longer (documented, anyhow) burn people at the stake and we argue about the legality and the morality and the value of the death penalty. On the other hand, we have no consistency in the application of the death penalty (I will not even attempt to touch the issue of selective prosecution right now), starting with this bunch of retards here in Michigan who decided to abolish it. So a person could murder someone here and get life or murder someone in Texas and get the needle. Until we come together as a society, without a crazy patchwork quilt of laws and punishments differing from state to state, We the People can expect to continue to be overridden and out-interpreted by the Law of the Land, the SCOTUS, because States' rights are of little importance, as evidenced by the current court's decision in this case.

"In the uncertainty of punishment following crime lies the weakness of our ‘halting crime.'"
--Hon. Isaac Charles Parker (The Hanging Judge)

I could have sworn I had posted here about some of these issues before, but I cannot find it now. Maybe it was deleted for some reason or maybe that was all just part of my delusion. Let me tell you about my delusion. It forcefully echoes phrases like "We the People of the United States" and "Liberty and justice for all" - stuff that is powerful, has meaning, resounds from within and radiates without. I think it used to be called Patriotism.