"The death penalty is not a proportional punishment for the rape of a child"

[Tex]

Originally Posted by Cali Coug

You should first read the update on the link you posted. Then you should review what it takes for the Court to rehear a case (hint: it won't require any of the majority to change their mind, as only 4 justices have to agree).

We don't know which justices agreed to consider re-hearing. It could be just the 4 dissenters, or maybe one of the 5 came to their senses.

The point is, it may be reheard.

[exUte]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

The death penalty is just plain a travesty. I wish I could just call it ridiculous. Were the issue not so grave that would be the most accurate adjective.

for an unborn child, who if simply left alone, would live?

[exUte]

Originally Posted by Tex

So says Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy in yet another 5-4 decision.

It's hard for me not to just be thoroughly disgusted with that statement.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080625/..._co/scotus_rdp

pics of slaughtered US soldiers or other dispicable pics if it serves the media's and liberal's agenda........but they will NEVER show an aborted baby .... especially a partial birth abortion. I wonder why.

[Tex]

The court today denied, 7-2, an appeal to rehear the case. Scalia, brilliant as always, voted with the majority not because he doesn't think the case was wrong decided, but:

... because the views of the American people on the death penalty for child rape were, to tell the truth, irrelevant to the majority’s decision in this case. The majority opinion, after an unpersuasive attempt to show that a consensus against the penalty existed, in the end came down to this: “[T]he Constitution contemplates that in the end our own judgment will be brought to bear on the question of the acceptability of the death penalty under the Eighth Amendment.” Of course the Constitution contemplates no such thing; the proposed Eighth Amendment would have been laughed to scorn if it had read “no criminal penalty shall be imposed which the Supreme Court deems unacceptable.” But that is what the majority opinion said, and there is no reason to believe that absence of a national consensus would provoke second thoughts.

Beautiful. He also destroys Kennedy's efforts to muddle the question of whether the court ought to consider military codes in determining "cruel and unusual" for civilians.

In one sentence:

It is difficult to imagine . . . how rape of a child could sometimes be deserving of death for a soldier but never for a civilian.