Many rape victims recover. Many victims of other violent crimes never do. No victim of murder ever recover. The line in the sand seems quite clear to me.
Legislators have absolute freedom to vote and pass any bill they want. They are immune from any and all criminal and civil penalties for the bills they vote on and pass. Whether it will be enforced later down the line by the courts is another issue. But they will face no penalty (except perhaps at re-election time) even if they pass a law that flies in the face of supreme court precedent.
South Dakota recently passed a law banning almost all abortions. This quite clearly defies Roe vs Wade and was intended to bring this issue to the courts once again, perhaps with a different outcome than thirty years ago.
If a bunch of states got together and passed laws to execute rapists, the Supreme Court would be forced to reconsider whether the practice is cruel and unusual anymore.
If sex crimes were made eligible for the death penalty, it would be a virtual guarantee that more rapists and molesters would get off without punishment.
One reason why sex crimes are not capital crimes is the difficulty in prosecution. Most sex crimes cases are plead-out, rather than going to trial. Often, it’s the word of one person against another, especially if no physical evidence was left. If the victim is a child, it’s even more difficult, because children are notoriously terrible witnesses. It’s easy for a clever defense attorney to make a child look like they’re lying on the stand, or have been coached to point the finger at the defendant.
Prosecutors are hard-pressed to make a case, which is why these crimes are often plea-bargained. They try to get at least *some * prison time out of the defendant. There are also huge numbers of sex-offense cases, and if every one of them went to trial, it would grind the system to a halt. (My husband works in a prison that has 2,800 inmates. 1300 of them are incarcerated for sex-offenses.)
If the death penalty were on the table, less defendants would be convicted. No one pleas to a death sentence, after all, so there would have to be atrial. Juries might hesitate to sentence a man to die based on what is usually somewhat shaky evidence.
Also, some victims might never come forward if the attacker was a family member or if they have mistaken feelings of guilt that it might be their fault.
I really don’t want to be raped. But I’d much rather be be raped several times in the worst way then be murdered. I think most people would feel the same way. Murder is worse. I like my life and would be willing to undergo pain and humiliation to maintain it.
This makes no sense. The point of (b. was that death penalty for rapists was rare before the Court made it illegal. I don’t see how you can blame the rareness of such capital laws on a future court decision!
And in anycase, the section b) part didn’t say it was “unjust”, it said that it was “disproportionate”.
Couldn’t the accused plead down to a lesser crime, or at least a lesser sentence? Just as no state executes all convicted murderers, only the especially heinous ones, I’d assume that the state would not execute all rapists. Just repeat offenders or paticularly brutal ones.
In fact, it seems to me that the threat of the death penalty (backed up by the occasional execution) could be a boon to prosecutors. They’d take a plea in exchange for taking it off the table. By having an even nastier option, they’d be better able to get the maximum amount of time served.
boy, that’s what we need–more prosecutorial discretion…It’s not enough that they can stack the counts to produce life imprisonment liabilty in virtually any child sexual abuse case that strikes their fancy.
Extortionists of the world unite, you have nothing to gain but a promotion…
Doesn’t seem to me to be necessarily a good thing. The threat of death sentence could result in many innocent people accepting a plea bargain despite a lack of werll-grounded evidences.
I’m not sure that favoring prosecution is necessarily a good idea. Well, actually, I think that it’s generally a bad idea.
By having an even nastier option, they’d be better able to get the maximum amount of time served.
In your universe, why bother with the expense and risk of a jury trial/acquittal?
Why not just have the prosecutor set the sentence and sign the occasional death warrant for anyone the cops bring in?
I see that the 15th century temporal tag is right on for parner M, altho I think we are more accurately talking Torquemada’s jurisdiction (Spain) than the relatively enlightened Italy as cited. Please relocate.
And, sorry! I did not read far enough ahead to see how I was preempted in bringing this up.
Oooops!
TBJ
Did you really need to say that in three different ways, in three different posts? Once would have sufficed. Or did you miss the part where I said I was categorically opposed to the death penalty? Because it’s right there in the OP.
Did you miss the part where I actually advocated doing that? That’s understandable, because I never said that.
Please read Lissa’s post, then mine, and when you understand the context of my argument*, get back to me with some actual content. Good night.
*Check your answer below: [spoiler]I was responding to Lissa’s point that the death penalty would complicate convicting sex offenders, and pointed out how it wouldn’t. Thus, Lissa, IMHO, did not answer my central question on why rape is not a capital crime when it is so despised in this country.
I advocate neither the death penalty in general nor its use as a bargaining chip in paticular, although my legal training of Law & Order reruns implies that it can be a powerful chip indeed. [/spoiler]
It would complicate the process. First of all, if the death penalty and life in prison are the only offers on the table, likely the accused will roll the dice to see if he can get an aquittal-- few will plead to life without parole (which, IIRC, is the only other option in a capital case.)
Prosecutors are sometimes hard-pressed to squeeze a few months out of sex offenders-- why would it suddenly be easier if the penalties were steeper? It seems to me the higher the stakes, the higher the burden of proof would be. Getting an offender to agree to a few years is different matter all together than convincing them to accept twenty-five years.
Secondly, our justics system simply couldn’t handle a huge increase in jury trials. It’s bogged-down as it is. Thirdly, capital cases require specially trained attorneys, which are far more expensive than ordinary public defenders. The trials would be lengthy, expensive, and chancy as to whether there’d even be a conviction.
Lastly, I want to express my disagreement with the notion that crimes which strike us as more “heinous” than others are the ones to which the penalty should be applied. It’s one of my disagreements with the death penalty in of itself. It leaves room for gross abuses. The penalty for a crime should be the same whether the victim is a cute, cuddly little white girl or a 300 pound thug in a prison. We should not be distributing sentences based on emotion-- whether the victim tugs at our heartstrings, but whether certain deeds were done.
So all assaults are the same? Regardless of condition so long as they live?
What if I were to sneak out of an alley with a knife, and while punching you in the head I inadvertently cut your arm with the knife stealing your wallet?
Is that the same as raping a child?
Both are assaults. Mine being 2 assaults. The rape being one. Treated the same in court, your logic gets me twice the prison time. (All being equal)
Sounds good.
(anyone that knows me on these boards must have a headache right now just thinking about the restraint I’m showing based on the forum.) :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:
Pardon me while I get anecdotal (and reinforce others’ earlier posts), but such a blanket statement deserves some rebuttal:
I’ve suffered more, psychologically, from being mugged at knifepoint (as an adult) than from both the times I was raped at cockpoint (as a child). So I can definitely say that, for me, rape was not the worst thing that ever happened to me. Of course, I haven’t been murdered yet, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t like it. I don’t think I’d feel anything afterwards, sure, but that’s kind of the point.
Well, maybe you should ask yourself why you have to exert superhuman restraint to argue a logical point, when most of those around you don’t seem to have such a problem doing so. I’m just sayin’.
One of the reasons that the death penalty was eventually eliminated for rape was that nearly universally (yes, nearly universally, not just in a majority of the cases) the only people who were executed for rape were black men who raped white women. This is despite the fact that rape is mostly a white-on-white and black-on-black crime, with cross-racial rape being distinctly less common. It was clear that the death penalty in rape cases was really to punish black men for daring to have sexual thoughts about white women. The death penalty for black men raping white women was used in the same states that had anti-miscegenation laws.
What European laws are you referring to? According to Amnesty International , there are only three European countries that have retained the death penalty for ordinary (i.e. - non-military) crimes: Russia, Yugoslvia (i.e. Serbia and Montenegro), and Belarus. And even then, Russia and Yugoslavia are considered abolitionist in practice, apparently having a policy of commuting death penalties.
You beat me in the head, causing a concussion that gives me a lifetime of blinding headaches, which results in the end of my teaching career. You slash my arm, which causes nerve damage, and means I can never play the violin or hold my grandchild or use the drill press in my woodshop again. You change my life forever – how is that “less” than rape!? You think punching someone in the head is nothing?!
This is exactly my point – sex crimes immediately become child rape, which immediately becomes worse than any other fate, and trivializes the real hurt done to people who aren’t raped, but whose lives are severely damaged or destroyed when their bodies are forever altered by vicious crimes.
You’re mad? There aren’t any icons that accurately portray the frustration and anger I feel when people trivialize real agony.
I am aware that most European countries do not have any death-penalty offenses at all, I was just hedging since I wasn’t sure which ones did.
Like the OP, though, I really am curious how those who advocate the death penalty for child molestation account for the absence of such penalties in western law? I mean, there must be some reason, right?
I’ve never been murdered, but I have been raped. I know that this is only an anecdotal evidence thing, but I’m gonna give my perspective anyway.
It’s possible to recover from rape. It’s possible to go on with your life and be normal and not have any lasting damage or scars.
Nobody recovers from murder.
If I had a choice between being raped and being raped and killed, I’d go for the one without the murder. Can’t even fathom thinking otherwise.
People (not saying SDMB, in meatspace) have looked at me like I was crazier than a shithouse rat for saying that I don’t consider what happened to me to be any worse than getting jumped and beaten up and having my wallet stolen. That’s their perogative. It doesn’t change my mind at all about what happened to me.
I’d rather be raped again than have skull fractures. Months of painful bone healing, possibly metal plates, and migraines for life? No way. I’ll take a rape that doesn’t leave a mark on me.