Just an “Opinion”
June 28, 2008
The Supreme Court in a recent ruling (Kennedy v. Louisiana) further narrowed the application of the death penalty to crimes against individuals that result in the victim’s death (crimes against the State are a preferred category).
Mr. Patrick Kennedy of Louisiana, petitioning the Court for his life, merely committed a particularly brutal rape on an eight year old girl.
Justice Kennedy (no relation), speaking for the majority, would argue that there is no degree of injury, pain or loss (one can never be restored, never made whole, left with no way back to the lives we lived) that kind of loss, no conceivable horror or unspeakable cruelty, however irrevocably ruinous that meets the threshold of moral depravity achieved by murder.
The Eighth Amendment (prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment), interpreted according to modern precedent i.e., “evolving standards of decency” would find Mr. Kennedy’s extermination disproportionate to his offense, therefore unconstitutional.
The tangled logic and tangential considerations that clutter the opinion seem to be Justice Kennedy’s rationale for circumventing the unintended consequences of representative government.
Both presidential candidates criticized the decision, more or less convincingly. More in McCain’s case, less in Obama’s. Obviously their standards of decency haven’t sufficiently evolved, but then again they are politicians.
