"AUSTIN — The Texas Senate passed its long-awaited “Jessica’s Law” Tuesday to protect children from sexual predators, but it reserved the death penalty for those twice convicted of the most heinous child rapes.
The bill also creates a new offense for “continual sexual abuse” of a child, increases penalties for certain child sex offenses and removes the statute of limitations for victims of child sex crimes. Houston Chronicle
“House Bill 8, sponsored by Greenville Senator Robert Deuell, would create a minimum sentence of 25 years for those convicted of an aggravated assault against a child under 14, with certain aggravating circumstances, such as kidnapping, threatening harm, actual bodily harm, or drugging the child. For a second offense, prosecutors would be given the option of seeking life without parole or the death penalty.” http://www.senate.state.tx.us/75r/senate/new.htm
Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Child sexual abuse cases are already incredibly emotionally charged, and I am leery about the prospect of someone being locked up for life based on two or three decade old evidence, some of which would probably be testimony from someone young at the time. Would this bill, if passed, lead to more “witch hunts” by prosecutors?
Or is this simply a tool to help better deal with one of the worst breeds of criminals?
Interestingly, the Texas Senate news release does not mention the eliminated statute of limitations.
Unless I’m behind the times on the law, the death penalty is only constitutional in cases of murder. So that’s either window dressing or a precaution in case that precedent is eliminated.
There’s nothing wrong with increasing the sentences as far as I can tell, but I’m not crazy about minimum sentencing - and even less so about the idea of 25-year sentences combined with decades-old cases.
As long as the decades old evidence is sufficient to convict, then I have no issues. Presumably if the evidence were not good enough, the accused would walk?
If there’s sufficient evidence for conviction, such a perpetrator should of course be put to death. Slowly. Very slowly. And painfully. Flayed, perhaps, then placed on an anthill. There’s a (New Testament) Bible verse that says something like: "For whoever harms one of these little ones, it would be better for him if he had never been born. "
People who are so enthusiastic about this, should recall the human damage that a zealous prosecutor can do: take the Mcmartin Daycare case (manhattan Beach, CA), or the Fells Acre daycare case (MA). In both, innocent people were destroyed, based upon the testimaony of minor children (later found to have been coerced).
First of all, I think now that we have seen what an overzealous prosecutor can do in just one recent sensational case, we should not go overboard on changing existing law to this extent.
Secondly, I have said on this board before that an equivalent sentence for rape and murder leads to dead rape victims, to ensure that they cannot testify. That being the case here, this law should be opposed.
In Texas ? That’s the state where Public Defenders do things like sleep through the trial. More likely it would be another way of killing poor people - the ones who end up with Public Defenders.
In 1977 the Supreme Court ruled in Coker v. Georgia that imposing the death penalty for raping an adult woman is unconstitutional. The Texas statue refers to raping a child. And there are other crimes punishable by death that don’t involve homicide; treason, espionage, and large scale drug trafficking are all punishable by death, but it’s been decades since anyone was actually executed.
The “no statue of limitations” scares me. After time, the ONLY testimony (barring a child saving the clothes in a Lewinsky style process) will be the adult memory of something that happened as a child.
Recovered memory that is used as testimony has been shown to have many problems. You can start with Googling Elizabeth Loftus and go from there for some background.
However, not everyone on the defense side can afford both the attorney and the psychologist to test and testify in your defense when some 30 year old suddenly remembers being abused.
That all said, I also do not shed tears for molesters. I just don’t trust the state.
Nitpick: Burdine’s lawyer wasn’t a PD, he was court appointed. Regardless of the state, 99.99% of those accused of a capital offense in which the death penalty is sought get a court appointed attorney, because hardly anyone can afford the roughly $100,000 it takes to defend a capital case. Burdine’s case was a shocking embarassment, but fortunately the 5th Circuit sitting en banc reversed Judge Jones’ opinion and ruled Burdine should get a new trial. He accepted a plea bargain to keep off of death row.
True, but the Court also said in Enmund v. Florida, 458 U.S. 782 (1982):
This seems to be saying that the Court is limiting the imposition of the death penalty to cases of murder or attempted murder. The Texas legislature apparently thinks they can get a different result out of the current Court, and they could be right. Still, I think it’s mostly political grandstanding. Assuming the law passes the house, I’d be surprised if anyone actually received the death penalty under the new law, and even more surprised if that conviction survived a constitutional challenge.
Well, the law does spell out what the aggravating circumstances would be.
This law is trouble waiting to happen. Overzealous prosecutors, a bloodthirsty public, and [del]made up[/del] repressed memories will add up to some poor bastard getting hosed. The death penalty makes an already bad idea worse.
I live in Texas and also oppose this. Texas executes too many people in my opinion. These crimes are heinous. But, there are too many cases of people being wrongfully accused.
I’m iffy, only because of massive potential for prosecutorial abuse and the
likelihood of an abuser killing a victim.
Btw, a person can take a political position for a religious reason. That does
not violate the First Amendment. However, the government can not support
a particular policy for a solely religious reason. I can support or oppose the
death penalty because of my religious/moral beliefs. If I were a gov’t official,
I would have to base my position on the Constitution and practical secular reasons, although I may have personal religious convictions underlying it.