Supreme Court to Examine Child Rape and the Death Penalty

In early January, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Kennedy v. Louisiana, in which the justices will decide whether the Constitution allows death as a punishment for the rape of a child.

According to the New York Times, of the 3,300 inmates currently on death row across the U.S., only two face execution for crimes that did not involve a killing. Both men are in Louisiana. The Court will hear the appeal of Patrick Kennedy, who was sentenced to death in 2004 for the rape of his 8 year-old step-daughter.

No one in the U.S. has been executed for a crime other than murder since 1964.In 1977, the Supreme Court decided in Coker v. Georgia that "a sentence of death is grossly disproportionate and excessive punishment for the crime of rape and is therefore forbidden by the Eighth Amendment as cruel and unusual punishment." But concluding that the "rape of a child under the age of 12 years of age is like no other crime," the Louisiana Supreme Court concluded that death was not disproportionate for Kennedy.

In an important amicus brief to the upcoming hearing of Kennedy's case before the Court in April, the National Association of Social Workers and a group of crisis centers argued that allowing the death penalty for rape will encourage offenders to kill their victims to prevent them from reporting the sexual assault.