What do Al Gore and raped children have in common ?

Answer

If lawmakers really careed so much about children being raped, why do they pass laws that subject children/juveniles charged as adults as young as 10 years old to adult prison facilities, county jails and adult detention centers where guess what, they are raped? Maybe they get some sort of twisted glee out of a 13 year old boy being raped in an adult prison facility? So unless I’m misunderstanding the “lawmakers” kids need to be protected from rape, unless they are accused of a crime, then screw em, they’re on their own, hardy har har. They write laws that pretty much put children in harms way of getting raped, and then they want to execute child rapists because children need to be protected. Children are at 5x higher risk of being raped in adult facilities. . I just don’t get it. Lawmakers say whatever serves them best, cause we see what these laws mean for children in adult jails, they mean rape within the first 48 hours, and the “lawmakers” have paved the way for it to happen.

And what really pisses me off is Obama basically saying he doesn’t see anything wrong with this law if States want to do it, such as LA. I mean, in his home state of Illinois some 26 death row inmates have been exonerated on DNA and he was on the special commission that Ryan started and voted for the moratorium. I guess he’s turning into just another political hack speaking out of both sides of his mouth.

#23 ParatrooperJJ
Anyone remember the McMartin preschool case? That’s why you don’t have the death penalty for child rape.

Aside from the innocence of the defendants, the preschool cases (McMartin was only one of many) are particularly relevant to this discussion because virtually all the charges and convictions were based purely on the testimony of the child “victims” in the absence of any supporting forensic evidence.

Those cases are also a testament to America’s obsession with child sex crimes at the expense of justice and rationality. Even now, there is absolutely no public concern for those who still languish in prison, not to mention the many who merely had their lives destroyed. That’s just the price “we” have to pay to protect our children. Lawmakers love any law they can tie to child safety because it instantly turns the public into a mindless lynch mob. Like throwing meat to a starving lion. There’s no such thing as too much government when it comes to our children.

You get the idea, I’m sure.

#15 supercat
Why would killing the child reduce the likelihood of his getting caught and prosecuted? I would think that forensic evidence would be more relevant than the child’s testimony in such cases.

True, assuming there’s a body to get forensic evidence from.

Although I choose NOT to dwell on it, there is hardly a day that goes by that something doesn’t trigger the memories.

However, I am an opponent of the death penalty.

I will admit there have been times when, as an adult, I wished I could be given 5 minutes with my assailants to do with as I please. But even that would not solve a thing.

Their deaths would not change what happened nor would it erase the memories.

I am a firm believer in KARMA and I have no doubt that they will ‘get theirs’ either in this life or the hereafter.

I am aware that there are hundreds of GUILTY people on death row but there are just too many innocent people there as well. Exonerations are happening more often now, thanks to DNA.

I would rather see a GUILTY man go free than to see an INNOCENT man executed.

I’ve always thought rapists in general, regardless of the age of their victim, should be removed permanently from this planet in a manner as horrible and terror inducing as their victim suffered. The problem with actually being able to do it has been pointed out by everyone, how do you trust the actual verdict?

You really can’t today because most reports of rape are false, and there is no real penalty for a woman making a false report. It’s one of the reasons why I think that prosecution should be partially privatized, so that men can hire prosecutors to send women to prison for such things when the state won’t do it.

Why would killing the child reduce the likelihood of his getting caught and prosecuted? I would think that forensic evidence would be more relevant than the child’s testimony in such cases. I would expect jurors would probably examine the forensic evidence with a less critical eye in cases where the child was killed than in cases where a child performed badly under cross-examination.

A bigger question would be how many yearly visits the victim would have to make to the parole board to ensure that the attacker was never released to seek vengeance. Today’s sentence might be life-without-parole, but there’s no guarantee that some future people in government wouldn’t reduce it.

I do think the death-penalty trial procedures need some revamping, but if anything that would at most justify a remand in this case. IMHO, the death penalty is only appropriate in cases where a jury, knowing anything and everything that might reasonably incline them against a death sentence–including things that would not be admissible in the guilt phase–would agree that there is no question as to guilt or the appropriateness of the punishment. Of course, the government generally doesn’t want juries to know everything since that would make it too hard to get convictions, but securing a death sentence isn’t supposed to be easy.

I’m also skeptical of the legal reasoning. And the imperfections of the justice system taint all the sentences it hands out, not just the emotionally salient one of death.

As for the idea of executing child rapists, I don’t see any point in giving a child rapist a reason to kill the main witness to his crime simply because he has nothing to lose by doing so. In fact, no such a law cannot be written with the child in mind. But, alas, as is the case with nearly all laws that invoke the “save the children” theme, it makes for nice political theater, appeases public outrage, and only hurts the people it claims to help.

Vote Edintally for Emperor in ’08!!

That being the case, it’s impossible to really support the death penalty as a tool used by the government as ‘punishment’ or justice, in any case. In that vein, this is a welcome result of a case, although I couldn’t really make a decision on whether it’s good legal argument or not.

couldn’t you agree that this is in enough of a morality grey area that it should be decided by the people living in the state, rather than by the supreme court for the whole of the country?

personally i’m against the death penalty in all cases – but i don’t think it is clearly cruel and unusual punishment to kill a man who rapes a 8 yr old..seems to be something that should be decided by voters of a state.

disclaimer: i’m not a lawyer, but live with two and have been known to have sex with law students.