Nixon, too, backs death penalty for child rapists
Though he probably didn’t mention it today, Gov. Matt Blunt’s old sparring partner, Attorney General Jay Nixon, also backs the death penalty for child rapists.
Blunt, speaking at an afternoon news conference in Clayton, underscored, once again, his support for a bill that would make the aggravated rape of a minor a capital offense.
It’s a stance that Nixon, a Democrat now running for Blunt’s job, shares as well.
Nixon and Blunt have attached their name to separate briefs filed with the U.S. Supreme Court in a case involving a Louisiana man sentenced to death for raping his eight-year-old stepdaughter at their home near New Orleans.
The issue has special resonance in Missouri because, had there already been a law making child rapists eligible for the death penalty, kidnapper Michael Devlin might be facing lethal injection instead of life in prison.
Though the debate is clearly laden with intense emotions, legally, it’s right out of a 1L textbook: Is child rape heinous enough to warrant the state’s ultimate penalty? Or is executing someone for a crime other than murder violate the Constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment?
Both Blunt and Nixon argue the former. Here’s some of the argument from Nixon’s brief:
Violent child rape is unique. No other crime inflicts comparable damage. And no other crime requires the peculiar depravity manifested by those who rape small children. The pitiless infliction of permanent lifelong suffering upon a young child reflects a degree of culpability, a degree of manifest evil, that is qualitatively distinct.
In his press conference today, Blunt essentially makes the same argument.
“We’re talking about the most horrendous crimes one can imagine and it deserves the harshest penalty possible,” Blunt said. “It is the punishment that fits the crime.”
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The biggest problem with these escalating punishments is that the crimes are less likely to be reported. Most of the sexual assaults are committed by friends or family. If grandma finds out her son is molesting one of her grandchildren, do we really think she would turn him in if he could be put to death. Instead she will “attempt” to handle it within the family. Punishment should be left to prosecutors, judges and jurors, not politicians looking for headlines.