quote:

Originally posted by DorianGreyed:

Talk of setting child rapists free is coming only from you.

quote:

...I'm for putting all of these tigers into a cage and letting them destroy each other...rather than raping or sodomizing some small,innocent child.

We could even put it on Pay Per View and make some big bucks doing it.Sport fans worldwide would love it.

hippolips

quote:

Originally posted by DorianGreyed:
"Hi Dor:

I'm not for letting the tiger out of it's cage...I'm for putting all of these tigers into a cage and letting them destroy each other...rather than raping or sodomizing some small,innocent child."

I put it in bold for you. You must mean setting them free, since they aren't rapists until after a trial. How else could you mean it? (I assume you still want the part of the Constitution that talks about having a trial.)

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I'd be interested in what your opinion would be ,if a child of yours was raped or sodomized by one of these animals.

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sts, Jindal has signed into law a bill to castrate them

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Originally posted by DorianGreyed:
"Hi Dor:

Picky,picky,picky.

I'll amend my statement to read..."rather than raping or sodomizing ANOTHER small,innocent child."

So you are saying that the choice is either executing or setting free.

But you presented a false dilemma, Hippo, just like the sensationalist news media. The Supreme Court didn't say the guy was to be set free, did it? Why not tell us exactly what the Court did say? Does it in any way suggest that the man should be set free, as you imply was the choice? Did even one of the judges say that the man should be set free? If not, tell me where you got the idea that a rapist being set free is the alternative to not executing him? Like I said, you are the one that brought that up. It's not being picky to use your exact words in context.

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Originally posted by hippolips:
You're a master of the art of deflection, I give you that.hippolips

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Originally posted by DorianGreyed:
Just a bit more information from CNN's story about this -

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion that execution in this case would violate the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, citing "evolving standards of decency" in the United States.

Such standards, the justice wrote, forbid capital punishment for any crime against an individual other than murder.

"We conclude that, in determining whether the death penalty is excessive, there is a distinction between intentional first-degree murder on the one hand and nonhomicide crimes against individual persons, even including child rape, on the other," wrote Kennedy, who is not related to the convicted rapist.

In the majority opinion, Anthony Kennedy acknowledged "the victim's fright, the sense of betrayal, and the nature of her injuries caused more prolonged physical and mental suffering than, say, a sudden killing by an unseen assassin."

But the justice -- supported by Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer -- wrote that when determining what punishment the Eighth Amendment prohibits, "evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society" must be taken into account.

After a review of the "history of the death penalty for this and other nonhomicide crimes, current state statutes and new enactments ... we conclude there is a national consensus against capital punishment for the crime of child rape," Anthony Kennedy wrote.

U.S. Supreme Court rulings in 1976 and 1977 barred capital punishment for rape. But in 1995, Louisiana passed a law allowing execution for the sexual violation of a child under 12. State lawmakers argued that the earlier high court cases pertained only to "adult women."

Supporters of Louisiana's law say that besides murder, no crime is more deserving of the death penalty than child rape and that the punishment would be used only in the most heinous of circumstances.

"A lot of people think there should not be a death penalty because the child survives," sex crimes prosecutor Kat Bartholomew said. "In my opinion, the rape of a child is more heinous and more hideous than a homicide."

She said a sexual assault on a child "takes away their innocence. It takes away their childhood. It mutilates their spirit. It kills their soul."

Death penalty opponents contend, among other things, that it could give attackers a reason to murder their victims. In Wednesday's ruling, Anthony Kennedy agreed, writing, "A state that punishes child rape by death may remove a strong incentive for the rapist not to kill the victim."

The idea that states should be allowed to execute whomever they want is a throwback to a time when states thought they were independent entities loosely joined together. That is old style thinking. We are one country, the United States. We are no longer a confederation of states/countries, and haven't been since 1789.

I note that there are two SCOTUS precedents for this. (CNN mentions this; Yahoo only mentions one.) I have no idea if they were also Liberal courts or not. But quite obviously, this Court is re-affirming the earlier decisions. Yahoo seems to imply that the earlier decision only held for adult women. Neither Yahoo nor CNN give any evidence that the decisions then were only dealing with adult victims. It seems to me that today, the Court is saying, "What part of No' don't you understand?"

I know that many are sorry that, slowly but surely, they are losing the right to execute people for all sorts of crimes. They can longer execute people for robbery, can't execute people for rape, and can't execute people whose intelligence is so limited that they haven't a clue about right or wrong. That's one of the prices they have to pay in order to be in a civilized country. (But I am certain that some countries still have public executions, so...)