Kennedy v Louisiana
June 25, 2008
Vote: 5-4
Here the Court
considers the constitutionality of the death penalty for a defendant convicted
of child rape.
Justice Kennedy delivered the opinion of the Court.
The
National Government and, beyond it, the separate States are bound by the
proscriptive mandates of the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution of the United
States, and all persons within those respective jurisdictions may invoke its
protection. … Patrick Kennedy, the petitioner here, seeks to set aside his
death sentence under the Eighth Amendment. He was charged by the respondent,
the State of
I
Petitioner's crime was one that cannot be recounted in
these pages in a way sufficient to capture in full the hurt and horror
inflicted on his victim or to convey the revulsion society, and the jury that
represents it, sought to express by sentencing petitioner to death. At 9:18
a.m. on March 2, 1998, petitioner called 911 to report that his stepdaughter,
referred to here as L.H., had been raped. He told the 911 operator that L.H.
had been in the garage while he readied his son for school. Upon hearing loud
screaming, petitioner said, he ran outside and found L.H. in the side yard. Two
neighborhood boys, petitioner told the operator, had dragged L.H. from the
garage to the yard, pushed her down, and raped her. Petitioner claimed he saw
one of the boys riding away on a blue 10-speed bicycle.
When
police arrived at petitioner's home between 9:20 and 9:30 a.m., they found L.H.
on her bed, wearing a T-shirt and wrapped in a bloody blanket. She was bleeding
profusely from the vaginal area. Petitioner told police he had carried her from
the yard to the bathtub and then to the bed. Consistent with this explanation,
police found a thin line of blood drops in the garage on the way to the house
and then up the stairs. Once in the bedroom, petitioner had used a basin of
water and a cloth to wipe blood from the victim. This later prevented medical
personnel from collecting a reliable DNA sample.
L.H. was
transported to the Children's Hospital. An expert in pediatric forensic
medicine testified that L.H.'s injuries were the most severe he had seen from a
sexual assault in his four years of practice. A laceration to the left wall of
the vagina had separated her cervix from the back of her vagina, causing her
rectum to protrude into the vaginal structure. Her entire perineum was torn
from the posterior fourchette to the anus. The injuries required emergency
surgery.
At the
scene of the crime, at the hospital, and in the first weeks that followed, both L.H. and petitioner maintained in their
accounts to investigators that L.H. had been raped by two neighborhood boys.
One of L.H.'s doctors testified at trial that L.H. told all hospital personnel
the same version of the rape, although she reportedly told one family member
that petitioner raped her. L.H. was interviewed several days after the rape by
a psychologist. The interview was videotaped, lasted three hours over two days,
and was introduced into evidence at trial. On the tape one can see that L.H.
had difficulty discussing the subject of the rape. She spoke haltingly and with
long pauses and frequent movement. Early in the interview, L.H. expressed
reservations about the questions being asked:
“I'm going to tell the same story. They just want me to
change it... . They want me to say my Dad did it... . I don't want to say it... .
I tell them the same, same story.” …
She told
the psychologist that she had been playing in the garage when a boy came over
and asked her about Girl Scout cookies she was selling; and that the boy “pulled
[her by the legs to] the backyard,” …
where he placed his hand over her mouth, “pulled down [her] shorts,” … and
raped her. …
Eight days
after the crime, and despite L.H.'s insistence that petitioner was not the
offender, petitioner was arrested for the rape. The State's investigation had
drawn the accuracy of petitioner and L.H.'s story into question. Though the
defense at trial proffered alternative explanations, the case for the
prosecution, credited by the jury, was based upon the following evidence: An
inspection of the side yard immediately after the assault was inconsistent with
a rape having occurred there, the grass having been found mostly undisturbed
but for a small patch of coagulated blood. Petitioner said that one of the
perpetrators fled the crime scene on a blue 10-speed bicycle but gave
inconsistent descriptions of the bicycle's features, such as its handlebars.
Investigators found a bicycle matching petitioner and L.H.'s description in
tall grass behind a nearby apartment, and petitioner identified it as the
bicycle one of the perpetrators was riding. Yet its tires were flat, it did not
have gears, and it was covered in spider webs. In addition police found blood
on the underside of L.H.'s mattress. This convinced them the rape took place in
her bedroom, not outside the house.
Police
also found that petitioner made two telephone calls on the morning of the rape.
Sometime before 6:15 a.m., petitioner called his employer and left a message
that he was unavailable to work that day. Petitioner called back between 6:30
and 7:30 a.m. to ask a colleague how to get blood out of a white carpet because
his daughter had “ 'just become a young
lady.' ” … At 7:37 a.m., petitioner called B & B Carpet Cleaning and
requested urgent assistance in removing bloodstains from a carpet. Petitioner
did not call 911 until about an hour and a half later.
About a month
after petitioner's arrest L.H. was removed from the custody of her mother, who
had maintained until that point that petitioner was not involved in the rape.
On June 22, 1998, L.H. was returned home and told her mother for the first time
that petitioner had raped her. And on December 16, 1999, about 21 months after
the rape, L.H. recorded her accusation in a videotaped interview with the
The State
charged petitioner with aggravated rape of a child … and sought the death
penalty. …
The trial
began in August 2003. L.H. was then 13 years old. She testified that she “ 'woke up one morning and Patrick was on top of
[her].' ” She remembered petitioner bringing her “[a] cup of orange juice
and pills chopped up in it” after the rape and overhearing him on the telephone
saying she had become a “young lady.” … L.H. acknowledged that she had accused two
neighborhood boys but testified petitioner told her to say this and that it was
untrue. …
The jury
having found petitioner guilty of aggravated rape, the penalty phase ensued.
The State presented the testimony of S.L., who is the cousin and goddaughter of
petitioner's ex-wife. S.L. testified that petitioner sexually abused her three
times when she was eight years old and that the last time involved sexual
intercourse. … She did not tell anyone until two years later and did not pursue
legal action.
The jury
unanimously determined that petitioner should be sentenced to death. The
Supreme Court of Louisiana affirmed. … The court rejected petitioner's reliance
on Coker v. Georgia … (1977), noting that, while Coker bars
the use of the death penalty as punishment for the rape of an adult woman, it
left open the question which, if any, other nonhomicide crimes can be punished
by death consistent with the Eighth Amendment. Because “ 'children
are a class that need special protection,' ” the state court reasoned, the
rape of a child is unique in terms of the harm it inflicts upon the victim and
our society. …
The court
acknowledged that petitioner would be the first person executed for committing
child rape since [the relevant statute] was amended in 1995 and that
The state
court next asked whether “child rapists rank among the worst offenders.” … It
noted the severity of the crime; that the execution of child rapists would
serve the goals of deterrence and retribution; and that, unlike in Atkins
and Roper, there were no characteristics of petitioner that tended to
mitigate his moral culpability. … It concluded: “[S]hort of
first-degree murder, we can think of no other non-homicide crime more deserving
[of capital punishment].” …
On this
reasoning the Supreme Court of Louisiana rejected petitioner's argument that
the death penalty for the rape of a child under 12 years is disproportionate
and upheld the constitutionality of the statute. …
We granted
certiorari. …
II
The Eighth Amendment, applicable to the States through the
Fourteenth Amendment, provides that “[e]xcessive bail shall not be required,
nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” The
Amendment proscribes “all excessive punishments, as well as cruel and unusual
punishments that may or may not be excessive.” … The Court explained in Atkins
… and Roper … that the Eighth Amendment's protection against excessive
or cruel and unusual punishments flows from the basic “precept of justice that
punishment for [a] crime should be graduated and proportioned to [the] offense.”
… Whether this requirement has been fulfilled is determined not by the
standards that prevailed when the Eighth Amendment was adopted in 1791 but by
the norms that “currently prevail.” … The
Amendment “draw[s] its meaning from the evolving standards of decency that mark
the progress of a maturing society.” … This is because “[t]he
standard of extreme cruelty is not merely descriptive, but necessarily embodies
a moral judgment. The standard itself remains the same, but its applicability
must change as the basic mores of society change.” …
Evolving
standards of decency must embrace and express respect for the dignity of the
person, and the punishment of criminals must conform to that rule. … As we shall discuss, punishment is justified
under one or more of three principal rationales: rehabilitation, deterrence,
and retribution. … It is the last of
these, retribution, that most often can contradict the
law's own ends. This is of particular concern when the Court interprets the
meaning of the Eighth Amendment in capital cases. When the law punishes by
death, it risks its own sudden descent into brutality, transgressing the
constitutional commitment to decency and restraint.
For these
reasons we have explained that capital punishment must “be limited to those
offenders who commit 'a narrow category of the most serious crimes' and whose
extreme culpability makes them 'the most deserving of execution.' ” …Though the
death penalty is not invariably unconstitutional, … the
Court insists upon confining the instances in which the punishment can be
imposed.
Applying
this principle, we held in Roper and Atkins that the
execution of juveniles and mentally retarded persons are punishments violative
of the Eighth Amendment because the offender had a diminished personal
responsibility for the crime. … The Court further has held that the death
penalty can be disproportionate to the crime itself where the crime did not
result, or was not intended to result, in death of the victim. In Coker [v.
In these
cases the Court has been guided by “objective indicia of society's standards,
as expressed in legislative enactments and state practice with respect to
executions.” … The inquiry does not end there, however. Consensus is not
dispositive. Whether the death penalty is disproportionate to the crime
committed depends as well upon the standards elaborated by controlling
precedents and by the Court's own understanding and interpretation of the
Eighth Amendment's text, history, meaning, and purpose. …
Based both
on consensus and our own independent judgment, our holding is that a death
sentence for one who raped but did not kill a child, and who did not intend to
assist another in killing the child, is unconstitutional under the Eighth and
Fourteenth Amendments.
III
A
The
existence of objective indicia of consensus against making a crime punishable
by death was a relevant concern in Roper, Atkins, Coker,
and Enmund, and we follow the approach of those cases here. The
history of the death penalty for the crime of rape is an instructive beginning
point.
In 1925,
18 States, the
In 1972, Furman
[v. Georgia] invalidated most of the
state statutes authorizing the death penalty for the crime of rape; and in Furman's
aftermath only six States reenacted their capital rape provisions. Three
States--Georgia,
By
contrast, 44 States have not made child rape a capital offense. As for federal
law, Congress in the Federal Death Penalty Act of 1994 expanded the number of
federal crimes for which the death penalty is a permissible sentence, including
certain nonhomicide offenses; but it did not do the same for child rape or
abuse. … Under 18
The
evidence of a national consensus with respect to the death penalty for child
rapists, as with respect to juveniles, mentally retarded offenders, and
vicarious felony murderers, shows divided opinion but, on balance, an opinion
against it. Thirty-seven jurisdictions--36 States plus the Federal
Government--have the death penalty. As mentioned above, only six of those
jurisdictions authorize the death penalty for rape of a child. Though our
review of national consensus is not confined to tallying the number of States
with applicable death penalty legislation, it is of significance that, in 45
jurisdictions, petitioner could not be executed for child rape of any kind.
That number surpasses the 30 States in Atkins and Roper and
the 42 States in Enmund that prohibited the death penalty under the
circumstances those cases considered.
B
At least one difference between this case and our Eighth
Amendment proportionality precedents must be addressed. Respondent and its amici
suggest that some States have an “erroneous understanding of this Court's
Eighth Amendment jurisprudence.” … They submit that the general propositions
set out in Coker, contrasting murder and rape, have been interpreted
in too expansive a way, leading some state legislatures to conclude that Coker
applies to child rape when in fact its reasoning does not, or ought not,
apply to that specific crime.
This
argument seems logical at first, but in the end it is unsound. In Coker, a
four-Member plurality of the Court, plus Justice Brennan and Justice Marshall
in concurrence, held that a sentence of death for the rape of a 16-year-old
woman, who was a minor under Georgia law, … yet was characterized by the Court
as an adult, was disproportionate and excessive under the Eighth Amendment. …
The
plurality noted that only one State had a valid statute authorizing the death
penalty for adult rape and that “in the vast majority of cases, at least 9 out
of 10, juries ha[d] not imposed the death sentence.” … This “history
and ... objective evidence of the country's present judgment concerning the
acceptability of death as a penalty for rape of an adult woman,” … confirmed
the Court's independent judgment that punishing adult rape by death was not
proportional. …
… Coker's analysis of
the Eighth Amendment is susceptible of a reading that would prohibit making
child rape a capital offense. In context, however, Coker's holding was
narrower than some of its language read in isolation. The Coker
plurality framed the question as whether, “with respect to rape of an adult
woman,” the death penalty is disproportionate punishment. … And it repeated the
phrase “an adult woman” or “an adult female” in discussing the act of rape or
the victim of rape eight times in its opinion. … The distinction between adult
and child rape was not merely rhetorical; it was central to the Court's
reasoning. The opinion does not speak to the constitutionality of the death
penalty for child rape, an issue not then before the Court. …
… Respondent cites no reliable data to indicate that state
legislatures have read Coker to bar capital punishment for child rape
and, for this reason, have been deterred from passing applicable death
penalty legislation. In the absence of evidence from those States where
legislation has been proposed but not enacted we refuse to speculate about the
motivations and concerns of particular state legislators.
The
position of the state courts, furthermore, to which state legislators look for
guidance on these matters, indicates that Coker has not blocked the
emergence of legislative consensus. The state courts that have confronted the
precise question before us have been uniform in concluding that Coker
did not address the constitutionality of the death penalty for the crime of
child rape. …
There is,
to be sure, some contrary authority contained in various state-court opinions. …
We
conclude on the basis of this review that there is no clear indication that
state legislatures have misinterpreted Coker to hold that the death
penalty for child rape is unconstitutional. The small number of States that
have enacted this penalty, then, is relevant to determining whether there is a
consensus against capital punishment for this crime.
C
Respondent insists that the six States where child rape is
a capital offense, along with the States that have proposed but not yet enacted
applicable death penalty legislation, reflect a consistent direction of change
in support of the death penalty for child rape. Consistent change might
counterbalance an otherwise weak demonstration of consensus. … But whatever the
significance of consistent change where it is cited to show emerging support
for expanding the scope of the death penalty, no showing of consistent change
has been made in this case.
Respondent
and its amici identify five States where, in their view, legislation
authorizing capital punishment for child rape is pending. … It is not our
practice, nor is it sound, to find contemporary norms based upon state
legislation that has been proposed but not yet enacted. There are compelling
reasons not to do so here. Since the briefs were submitted by the parties,
legislation in two of the five States has failed. …
Aside from
pending legislation, it is true that in the last 13 years there has been change
towards making child rape a capital offense. This is evidenced by six new death
penalty statutes, three enacted in the last two years. But this showing is not
as significant as the data in Atkins, where 18 States between 1986 and
2001 had enacted legislation prohibiting the execution of mentally retarded
persons. … Respondent argues the instant case is like Roper because,
there, only five States had shifted their positions between 1989 and 2005, one
less State than here. … But in Roper, we emphasized that, though the
pace of abolition was not as great as in Atkins, it was
counterbalanced by the total number of States that had recognized the
impropriety of executing juvenile offenders.
When we decided Stanford v.
D
There are measures of consensus other than legislation.
Statistics about the number of executions may inform the consideration whether
capital punishment for the crime of child rape is regarded as unacceptable in
our society. … These statistics confirm our determination from our review of
state statutes that there is a social consensus against the death penalty for
the crime of child rape.
Nine
States--
Louisiana
is the only State since 1964 that has sentenced an individual to death for the
crime of child rape; and petitioner and Richard Davis, who was convicted and
sentenced to death for the aggravated rape of a 5-year-old child by a Louisiana
jury in December 2007, … are the only two individuals now on death row in the
United States for a nonhomicide offense.
After
reviewing the authorities informed by contemporary norms, including the history
of the death penalty for this and other nonhomicide crimes, current state
statutes and new enactments, and the number of executions since 1964, we
conclude there is a national consensus against capital punishment for the crime
of child rape.
IV
A
As we have
said in other Eighth Amendment cases, objective evidence of contemporary values
as it relates to punishment for child rape is entitled to great weight, but it
does not end our inquiry. “[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.” … We turn, then, to the
resolution of the question before us, which is informed by our precedents and
our own understanding of the Constitution and the rights it secures.
It must be
acknowledged that there are moral grounds to question a rule barring capital
punishment for a crime against an individual that did not result in death.
These facts illustrate the point. Here the victim's fright, the sense of betrayal,
and the nature of her injuries caused more prolonged physical and mental
suffering than, say, a sudden killing by an unseen assassin. The attack was not
just on her but on her childhood. For this reason, we should be most reluctant
to rely upon the language of the plurality in Coker, which posited
that, for the victim of rape, “life may not be nearly so
happy as it was” but it is not beyond repair. … Rape has a permanent
psychological, emotional, and sometimes physical impact on the child. … We
cannot dismiss the years of long anguish that must be endured by the victim of
child rape.
It does
not follow, though, that capital punishment is a proportionate penalty for the
crime. The constitutional prohibition against excessive or cruel and unusual
punishments mandates that the State's power to punish “be exercised within the
limits of civilized standards.” … Evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a
maturing society counsel us to be most hesitant before interpreting the Eighth
Amendment to allow the extension of the death penalty, a hesitation that has
special force where no life was taken in the commission of the crime. It is an
established principle that decency, in its essence, presumes respect for the
individual and thus moderation or restraint in the application of capital
punishment. …
To date
the Court has sought to define and implement this principle, for the most part,
in cases involving capital murder. One approach has been to insist upon general
rules that ensure consistency in determining who receives a death sentence. …
At the same time the Court has insisted, to ensure restraint and moderation in
use of capital punishment, on judging the “character and record of the
individual offender and the circumstances of the particular offense as a
constitutionally indispensable part of the process of inflicting the penalty of
death.” …
The
tension between general rules and case-specific circumstances has produced
results not all together satisfactory. … This has led some Members of the Court
to say we should cease efforts to resolve the tension and simply allow
legislatures, prosecutors, courts, and juries greater
latitude. … For others the failure to limit these same imprecisions by stricter
enforcement of narrowing rules has raised doubts concerning the
constitutionality of capital punishment itself. …
Our
response to this case law, which is still in search of a unifying principle,
has been to insist upon confining the instances in which capital punishment may
be imposed. …
Our concern
here is limited to crimes against individual persons. We do not address, for
example, crimes defining and punishing treason, espionage, terrorism, and drug
kingpin activity, which are offenses against the State. As it relates to crimes
against individuals, though, the death penalty should not be expanded to
instances where the victim's life was not taken. …
Consistent
with evolving standards of decency and the teachings of our precedents we
conclude that, in determining whether the death penalty is excessive, there is
a distinction between intentional first-degree murder on the one hand and
nonhomicide crimes against individual persons, even including child rape, on
the other. The latter crimes may be devastating in their harm, as here, but “in
terms of moral depravity and of the injury to the person and to the public,” …
they cannot be compared to murder in their “severity and irrevocability.” …
In
reaching our conclusion we find significant the number of executions that would
be allowed under respondent's approach. The crime of child rape, considering
its reported incidents, occurs more often than first-degree murder.
Approximately 5,702 incidents of vaginal, anal, or oral rape of a child under
the age of 12 were reported nationwide in 2005; this is almost twice the total
incidents of intentional murder for victims of all ages (3,405) reported during
the same period. … Although we have no reliable statistics on convictions for
child rape, we can surmise that, each year, there are hundreds, or more, of
these convictions just in jurisdictions that permit capital punishment. … But
under respondent's approach, the 36 States that permit the death penalty could
sentence to death all persons convicted of raping a child less than 12 years of
age. This could not be reconciled with our evolving standards of decency and
the necessity to constrain the use of the death penalty.
It might
be said that narrowing aggravators could be used in this context, as with
murder offenses, to ensure the death penalty's restrained application. We find
it difficult to identify standards that would guide the decisionmaker so the
penalty is reserved for the most severe cases of child rape and yet not imposed
in an arbitrary way. Even were we to forbid, say, the execution of first-time
child rapists, … or require as an aggravating factor a finding that the
perpetrator's instant rape offense involved multiple victims, the jury still
must balance, in its discretion, those aggravating factors against mitigating
circumstances. In this context, which involves a crime that in many cases will
overwhelm a decent person's judgment, we have no confidence that the imposition
of the death penalty would not be so arbitrary as to be “freakis[h].” … We
cannot sanction this result when the harm to the victim, though grave, cannot
be quantified in the same way as death of the victim. …
… We have
developed a foundational jurisprudence in the case of capital murder to guide
the States and juries in imposing the death penalty. Starting with Gregg, … we have spent more than 32 years
articulating limiting factors that channel the jury's discretion to avoid the
death penalty's arbitrary imposition in the case of capital murder. Though that
practice remains sound, beginning the same process for crimes for which no one
has been executed in more than 40 years would require experimentation in an
area where a failed experiment would result in the execution of individuals
undeserving of the death penalty. Evolving standards of decency are difficult
to reconcile with a regime that seeks to expand the death penalty to an area
where standards to confine its use are indefinite and obscure.
B
Our decision is consistent with the justifications offered
for the death penalty. Gregg instructs that capital punishment is
excessive when it is grossly out of proportion to the crime or it does not
fulfill the two distinct social purposes served by the death penalty:
retribution and deterrence of capital crimes. …
As in Coker,
here it cannot be said with any certainty that the death penalty for child rape
serves no deterrent or retributive function. … This argument does not overcome
other objections, however. The incongruity between the crime of child rape and
the harshness of the death penalty poses risks of overpunishment and counsels
against a constitutional ruling that the death penalty can be expanded to
include this offense.
The goal
of retribution, which reflects society's and the victim's interests in seeing
that the offender is repaid for the hurt he caused, … does
not justify the harshness of the death penalty here. In measuring retribution,
as well as other objectives of criminal law, it is appropriate to distinguish
between a particularly depraved murder that merits death as a form of
retribution and the crime of child rape. …
There is
an additional reason for our conclusion that imposing the death penalty for
child rape would not further retributive purposes. In considering whether
retribution is served, among other factors we have looked to whether capital
punishment “has the potential ... to allow the community as a whole,
including the surviving family and friends of the victim, to affirm its own
judgment that the culpability of the prisoner is so serious that the ultimate
penalty must be sought and imposed.” … In considering the death penalty for
nonhomicide offenses this inquiry necessarily also must include the question
whether the death penalty balances the wrong to the victim. ...
It is not
at all evident that the child rape victim's hurt is lessened when the law
permits the death of the perpetrator. Capital cases require a long-term
commitment by those who testify for the prosecution, especially when guilt and
sentencing determinations are in multiple proceedings. In cases like this the
key testimony is not just from the family but from the victim herself. During
formative years of her adolescence, made all the more daunting for having to
come to terms with the brutality of her experience, L.H. was required to
discuss the case at length with law enforcement personnel. In a public trial
she was required to recount once more all the details of the crime to a jury as
the State pursued the death of her stepfather. … And in the end the State made L.H.
a central figure in its decision to seek the death penalty, telling the jury in
closing statements: “[L.H.] is asking you, asking you to set up a time and
place when he dies.” …
Society's
desire to inflict the death penalty for child rape by enlisting the child
victim to assist it over the course of years in asking for capital punishment
forces a moral choice on the child, who is not of mature age to make that
choice. The way the death penalty here involves the child victim in its
enforcement can compromise a decent legal system; and this is but a subset of
fundamental difficulties capital punishment can cause in the administration and
enforcement of laws proscribing child rape.
There are,
moreover, serious systemic concerns in prosecuting the crime of child rape that
are relevant to the constitutionality of making it a capital offense. The
problem of unreliable, induced, and even imagined child testimony means there
is a “special risk of wrongful execution” in some child rape cases. … This
undermines, at least to some degree, the meaningful contribution of the death
penalty to legitimate goals of punishment. Studies conclude that children are
highly susceptible to suggestive questioning techniques like repetition, guided
imagery, and selective reinforcement. …
Similar
criticisms pertain to other cases involving child witnesses; but child rape
cases present heightened concerns because the central narrative and account of
the crime often comes from the child herself. She and the accused are, in most
instances, the only ones present when the crime was committed. … And the
question in a capital case is not just the fact of the crime, including, say,
proof of rape as distinct from abuse short of rape, but details bearing upon
brutality in its commission. These matters are subject to fabrication or
exaggeration, or both. … Although capital punishment does bring
retribution, and the legislature here has chosen to use it for this end, its
judgment must be weighed, in deciding the constitutional question, against the
special risks of unreliable testimony with respect to this crime.
With
respect to deterrence, if the death penalty adds to the risk of non-reporting,
that, too, diminishes the penalty's objectives. Underreporting is a common
problem with respect to child sexual abuse. … Although we know little about
what differentiates those who report from those who do not report,
… one of the most commonly cited reasons for nondisclosure is fear of
negative consequences for the perpetrator, a concern that has special force
where the abuser is a family member. … The experience of the amici who
work with child victims indicates that, when the punishment is death, both the
victim and the victim's family members may be more likely to shield the
perpetrator from discovery, thus increasing underreporting. … As a result,
punishment by death may not result in more deterrence or more effective
enforcement.
In
addition, by in effect making the punishment for child rape and murder
equivalent, a State that punishes child rape by death may remove a strong
incentive for the rapist not to kill the victim. Assuming the offender behaves
in a rational way, as one must to justify the penalty on grounds of deterrence,
the penalty in some respects gives less protection, not more, to the victim,
who is often the sole witness to the crime. … It might be argued that, even if
the death penalty results in a marginal increase in the incentive to kill, this
is counterbalanced by a marginally increased deterrent to commit the crime at
all. Whatever balance the legislature strikes,
however, uncertainty on the point makes the argument for the penalty less
compelling than for homicide crimes.
Each of
these propositions, standing alone, might not establish the unconstitutionality
of the death penalty for the crime of child rape. Taken in sum, however, they demonstrate
the serious negative consequences of making child rape a capital offense. These
considerations lead us to conclude, in our independent judgment, that the death
penalty is not a proportional punishment for the rape of a child.
V
Our determination that there is a consensus against the
death penalty for child rape raises the question whether the Court's own
institutional position and its holding will have the effect of blocking further
or later consensus in favor of the penalty from developing. The Court, it will
be argued, by the act of addressing the constitutionality of the death penalty,
intrudes upon the consensus-making process. By imposing a negative restraint,
the argument runs, the Court makes it more difficult for consensus to change or
emerge. The Court, according to the criticism, itself becomes enmeshed in the
process, part judge and part the maker of that which it judges.
These
concerns overlook the meaning and full substance of the established proposition
that the Eighth Amendment is defined by “the evolving standards of decency that
mark the progress of a maturing society.” … Confirmed by repeated, consistent
rulings of this Court, this principle requires that use of the death penalty be
restrained. The rule of evolving standards of decency with specific marks on
the way to full progress and mature judgment means that resort to the penalty
must be reserved for the worst of crimes and limited in its instances of
application. In most cases justice is not better served by terminating the life
of the perpetrator rather than confining him and preserving the possibility
that he and the system will find ways to allow him to understand the enormity
of his offense. Difficulties in administering the penalty to ensure against its
arbitrary and capricious application require adherence to a rule reserving its
use, at this stage of evolving standards and in cases of crimes against
individuals, for crimes that take the life of the victim.
The
judgment of the Supreme Court of Louisiana upholding the capital sentence is
reversed. This case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with
this opinion.
Justice Alito, with whom The Chief Justice, Justice Scalia, and Justice
Thomas join, dissenting.
The Court
today holds that the Eighth Amendment categorically prohibits the imposition of
the death penalty for the crime of raping a child. This is so, according to the
Court, no matter how young the child, no matter how many times the child is
raped, no matter how many children the perpetrator rapes, no matter how
sadistic the crime, no matter how much physical or psychological trauma is
inflicted, and no matter how heinous the perpetrator's prior criminal record
may be. The Court provides two reasons for this sweeping conclusion: First, the
Court claims to have identified “a national consensus” that the death penalty
is never acceptable for the rape of a child; second, the Court concludes, based
on its “independent judgment,” that imposing the death penalty for child rape
is inconsistent with “ 'the evolving standards of
decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.' ” … Because neither
of these justifications is sound, I respectfully dissent.
I
A
I turn
first to the Court's claim that there is “a national consensus” that it is
never acceptable to impose the death penalty for the rape of a child. The
Eighth Amendment's requirements, the Court writes, are “determined not by the
standards that prevailed” when the Amendment was adopted but “by the norms that
'currently prevail.' ” … In assessing
current norms, the Court relies primarily on the fact that only 6 of the 50
States now have statutes that permit the death penalty for this offense. But
this statistic is a highly unreliable indicator of the views of state lawmakers
and their constituents. As I will explain, dicta in this Court's decision in Coker
v. Georgia … (1977), has stunted legislative consideration of the
question whether the death penalty for the targeted offense of raping a young
child is consistent with prevailing standards of decency. The Coker
dicta gave state legislators and others good reason to fear that any law
permitting the imposition of the death penalty for this crime would meet
precisely the fate that has now befallen the Louisiana statute that is
currently before us, and this threat strongly discouraged state
legislators--regardless of their own values and those of their
constituents--from supporting the enactment of such legislation.
As the
Court correctly concludes, the holding in Coker was that the
Eighth Amendment prohibits the death penalty for the rape of an “ 'adult woman,' ” and thus Coker does
not control our decision here. … But the
reasoning of the Justices in the majority had broader implications.
Two
Members of the Coker majority, Justices Brennan and Marshall, took the
position that the death penalty is always unconstitutional. … Four other
Justices, who joined the controlling plurality opinion, suggested that the
The
implications of the Coker plurality opinion were plain. Justice
Powell, who concurred in the judgment overturning the death sentence in the
case at hand, did not join the plurality opinion because he understood it to
draw “a bright line between murder and all rapes--regardless of the degree of
brutality of the rape or the effect upon the victim.” … If Justice Powell read Coker
that way, it was reasonable for state legislatures to do the same.
Understandably,
state courts have frequently read Coker in precisely this way. The Court
is correct that state courts have generally understood the limited scope of the
holding in Coker, … but lower courts
and legislators also take into account--and I presume that this Court wishes
them to continue to take into account--the Court's dicta. And that is just what
happened in the wake of Coker. Four years after Coker, when
Florida's capital child rape statute was challenged, the Florida Supreme Court,
while correctly noting that this Court had not held that the Eighth
Amendment bars the death penalty for child rape, concluded that “[t]he
reasoning of the justices in Coker v. Georgia compels us to hold that
a sentence of death is grossly disproportionate and excessive punishment for
the crime of sexual assault and is therefore forbidden by the Eighth Amendment
as cruel and unusual punishment.” …
Numerous
other state courts have interpreted the Coker dicta similarly. …
For the
past three decades, these interpretations have posed a very high hurdle for
state legislatures considering the passage of new laws permitting the death
penalty for the rape of a child. The enactment and implementation of any new
state death penalty statute--and particularly a new type of statute such as one
that specifically targets the rape of young children--imposes many costs. There
is the burden of drafting an innovative law that must take into account this
Court's exceedingly complex Eighth Amendment jurisprudence. Securing passage of
controversial legislation may interfere in a variety of ways with the enactment
of other bills on the legislative agenda. Once the statute is enacted, there is
the burden of training and coordinating the efforts of those who must implement
the new law. Capital prosecutions are qualitatively more difficult than
noncapital prosecutions and impose special emotional burdens on all involved.
When a capital sentence is imposed under the new law, there is the burden of
keeping the prisoner on death row and the lengthy and costly project of
defending the constitutionality of the statute on appeal and in collateral
proceedings. And if the law is eventually overturned, there is the burden of
new proceedings on remand. Moreover, conscientious state lawmakers, whatever
their personal views about the morality of imposing the death penalty for child
rape, may defer to this Court's dicta, either because they respect our
authority and expertise in interpreting the Constitution or merely because they
do not relish the prospect of being held to have violated the Constitution and
contravened prevailing “standards of decency.” Accordingly, the Coker
dicta gave state legislators a strong incentive not to push for the enactment
of new capital child-rape laws even though these legislators and their
constituents may have believed that the laws would be appropriate and
desirable.
B
The Court expresses doubt that the Coker dicta had
this effect, but the skepticism is unwarranted. It would be quite remarkable if
state legislators were not influenced by the considerations noted above. And
although state legislatures typically do not create legislative materials like
those produced by Congress, there is evidence that proposals to permit the
imposition of the death penalty for child rape were opposed on the ground that
enactment would be futile and costly. …
C
Because of the effect of the Coker dicta, the
Court is plainly wrong in comparing the situation here to that in Atkins
or Roper v. Simmons … Atkins concerned the
constitutionality of imposing the death penalty on a mentally retarded
defendant. Thirteen years earlier, in Penry v. Lynaugh … (1989),
the Court had held that this was permitted by the Eighth Amendment, and
therefore, during the time between Penry and Atkins, state
legislators had reason to believe that this Court would follow its prior
precedent and uphold statutes allowing such punishment.
The
situation in Roper was similar. Roper concerned a challenge
to the constitutionality of imposing the death penalty on a defendant who had
not reached the age of 18 at the time of the crime. Sixteen years earlier in Stanford
v.
When state
lawmakers believe that their decision will prevail on the question whether to
permit the death penalty for a particular crime or class of offender, the
legislators' resolution of the issue can be interpreted as an expression of
their own judgment, informed by whatever weight they attach to the values of
their constituents. But when state legislators think that the enactment of a
new death penalty law is likely to be futile, inaction cannot reasonably be
interpreted as an expression of their understanding of prevailing societal
values. In that atmosphere, legislative inaction is more likely to evidence
acquiescence.
D
If anything can be inferred from state legislative
developments, the message is very different from the one that the Court
perceives. In just the past few years, despite the shadow cast by the Coker
dicta, five States have enacted targeted capital child-rape laws. … If, as the
Court seems to think, our society is “[e]volving” toward ever higher “standards
of decency,” … these enactments might represent the beginning of a new
evolutionary line.
Such a
development would not be out of step with changes in our society's thinking
since Coker was decided. During that time, reported instances of child
abuse have increased dramatically; and there are many indications of growing
alarm about the sexual abuse of children. In 1994, Congress enacted the Jacob
Wetterling Crimes Against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Registration Program, … which requires States receiving certain federal
funds to establish registration systems for convicted sex offenders and to
notify the public about persons convicted of the sexual abuse of minors. All 50
States have now enacted such statutes. In addition, at least 21 States and the
the involuntary commitment of sexual predators, and at least 12 States have
enacted residency restrictions for sex offenders.
Seeking to
counter the significance of the new capital child-rape laws enacted during the
past two years, the Court points out that in recent months efforts to enact similar
laws in five other States have stalled. … These developments, however, all took
place after our decision to grant certiorari in this case, …
which gave state legislators reason to delay the enactment of new legislation
until the constitutionality of such laws was clarified. And there is no
evidence of which I am aware that these legislative initiatives failed because
the proposed laws were viewed as inconsistent with our society's standards of
decency.
On the
contrary, the available evidence suggests otherwise. For example, in
E
Aside from its misleading tally of current state laws, the
Court points to two additional “objective indicia” of a “national consensus,” …
but these arguments are patent makeweights. The Court notes that Congress has
not enacted a law permitting the death penalty for the rape of a child, … but due to the territorial limits of the relevant
federal statutes, very few rape cases, not to mention child-rape cases, are
prosecuted in federal court. … Congress' failure to enact a death penalty
statute for this tiny set of cases is hardly evidence of Congress' assessment
of our society's values.
Finally,
the Court argues that statistics about the number of executions in rape cases
support its perception of a “national consensus,” but here too the statistics
do not support the Court's position. The Court notes that the last execution for
the rape of a child occurred in 1964, … but the Court
fails to mention that litigation regarding the constitutionality of the death
penalty brought executions to a halt across the board in the late 1960's. In
1965 and 1966, there were a total of eight executions for all offenses, and
from 1968 until 1977, the year when Coker was decided, there were no
executions for any crimes. The Court also fails to mention that in
F
In light of the points discussed above, I believe that the “objective
indicia” of our society's “evolving standards of decency” can be fairly
summarized as follows. Neither Congress nor juries have done anything that can
plausibly be interpreted as evidencing the “national consensus” that the Court
perceives. State legislatures, for more than 30 years, have operated under the
ominous shadow of the Coker dicta and thus have not been free to
express their own understanding of our society's standards of decency. And in
the months following our grant of certiorari in this case, state legislatures
have had an additional reason to pause. Yet despite the inhibiting legal
atmosphere that has prevailed since 1977, six States have recently enacted new,
targeted child-rape laws.
I do not
suggest that six new state laws necessarily establish a “national consensus” or
even that they are sure evidence of an ineluctable
trend. In terms of the Court's metaphor of moral evolution, these enactments
might have turned out to be an evolutionary dead end. But they might also have
been the beginning of a strong new evolutionary line. We will never know,
because the Court today snuffs out the line in its incipient stage.
II
A
The Court
is willing to block the potential emergence of a national consensus in favor of
permitting the death penalty for child rape because, in the end, what matters
is the Court's “own judgment” regarding “the acceptability of the death
penalty.” … Although the Court has much to say on this issue, most of the
Court's discussion is not pertinent to the Eighth Amendment question at hand.
And once all of the Court's irrelevant arguments are put aside, it is apparent
that the Court has provided no coherent explanation for today's decision.
In the
next section of this opinion, I will attempt to weed out the arguments that are
not germane to the Eighth Amendment inquiry, and in the final section, I will
address what remains.
B
A major theme of the Court's opinion is that permitting the
death penalty in child-rape cases is not in the best interests of the victims
of these crimes and society at large. In this vein, the Court suggests that it
is more painful for child-rape victims to testify when the prosecution is
seeking the death penalty. … The Court also argues that “a State that punishes
child rape by death may remove a strong incentive for the rapist not to kill
the victim” … and may discourage the reporting of
child rape. …
These
policy arguments, whatever their merits, are simply not pertinent to the
question whether the death penalty is “cruel and unusual” punishment. The
Eighth Amendment protects the right of an accused. It does not authorize this
Court to strike down federal or state criminal laws on the ground that they are
not in the best interests of crime victims or the broader society. The Court's
policy arguments concern matters that legislators should--and presumably
do--take into account in deciding whether to enact a capital child-rape
statute, but these arguments are irrelevant to the question that is before us
in this case. Our cases have cautioned against using “ 'the
aegis of the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause' to cut off the normal
democratic processes,” … but the Court forgets that warning here.
The Court
also contends that laws permitting the death penalty for the rape of a child
create serious procedural problems. Specifically, the Court maintains that it
is not feasible to channel the exercise of sentencing discretion in child-rape cases, … and that the unreliability of the
testimony of child victims creates a danger that innocent defendants will be
convicted and executed. … Neither of these contentions provides a basis for
striking down all capital child-rape laws no matter how carefully and narrowly
they are crafted.
The
Court's argument regarding the structuring of sentencing discretion is hard to
comprehend. The Court finds it “difficult to identify standards that would
guide the decisionmaker so the penalty is reserved for the most severe cases of
child rape and yet not imposed in an arbitrary way.” … Even assuming that the
age of a child is not alone a sufficient factor for limiting sentencing
discretion, the Court need only examine the child-rape laws recently enacted in
Texas, Oklahoma, Montana, and South Carolina, all of which use a concrete
factor to limit quite drastically the number of cases in which the death
penalty may be imposed. In those States, a defendant convicted of the rape of a
child may be sentenced to death only if the defendant has a prior conviction
for a specified felony sex offense. …
Moreover,
it takes little imagination to envision other limiting factors that a State
could use to structure sentencing discretion in child rape cases. Some of these
might be: whether the victim was kidnapped, whether the defendant inflicted
severe physical injury on the victim, whether the victim was raped multiple
times, whether the rapes occurred over a specified extended period, and whether
there were multiple victims.
The Court
refers to limiting standards that are “indefinite and obscure,” … but there is
nothing indefinite or obscure about any of the above-listed aggravating
factors. Indeed, they are far more definite and clear-cut than aggravating
factors that we have found to be adequate in murder cases. … For these reasons,
concerns about limiting sentencing discretion provide no support for the
Court's blanket condemnation of all capital child-rape statutes.
That
sweeping holding is also not justified by the Court's concerns about the
reliability of the testimony of child victims. First, the Eighth Amendment
provides a poor vehicle for addressing problems regarding the admissibility or
reliability of evidence, and problems presented by the testimony of child
victims are not unique to capital cases. Second, concerns about the reliability
of the testimony of child witnesses are not present in every child-rape case.
In the case before us, for example, there was undisputed medical evidence that
the victim was brutally raped, as well as strong independent evidence that
petitioner was the perpetrator. Third, if the Court's evidentiary concerns have
Eighth Amendment relevance, they could be addressed by allowing the death
penalty in only those child-rape cases in which the independent evidence is
sufficient to prove all the elements needed for conviction and imposition of a
death sentence. There is precedent for requiring special corroboration in
certain criminal cases. For example, some jurisdictions do not allow a
conviction based on the uncorroborated testimony of an accomplice. … A State wishing to permit the death penalty
in child-rape cases could impose an analogous corroboration requirement.
C
After all the arguments noted above are put aside, what is
left? What remaining grounds does the Court provide to justify its independent
judgment that the death penalty for child rape is categorically unacceptable? I
see two.
1
The first is the proposition that we should be “most
hesitant before interpreting the Eighth Amendment to allow the extension
of the death penalty.” … But holding that the Eighth Amendment does not
categorically prohibit the death penalty for the rape of a young child would
not “extend” or “expand” the death penalty. Laws enacted by the state
legislatures are presumptively constitutional, …
and until today, this Court has not held that capital child rape laws
are unconstitutional. … Consequently, upholding the constitutionality of such a
law would not “extend” or “expand” the death penalty; rather, it would confirm
the status of presumptive constitutionality that such laws have enjoyed up to
this point. And in any event, this Court has previously made it clear that “[t]he
Eighth Amendment is not a ratchet, whereby a temporary consensus on leniency
for a particular crime fixes a permanent constitutional maximum, disabling
States from giving effect to altered beliefs and responding to changed social
conditions.” …
2
The Court's final--and, it appears,
principal--justification for its holding is that murder, the only crime for
which defendants have been executed since this Court's 1976 death penalty
decisions, is unique in its moral depravity and in the severity of the injury
that i inflicts on the victim and the public. … But the Court makes little
attempt to defend these conclusions.
With respect
to the question of moral depravity, is it really true that every person who is
convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death is more morally depraved
than every child rapist? Consider the following two cases. In the first, a
defendant robs a convenience store and watches as his accomplice shoots the
store owner. The defendant acts recklessly, but was not the triggerman and did
not intend the killing. … In the second case, a previously convicted child
rapist kidnaps, repeatedly rapes, and tortures multiple child victims. Is it
clear that the first defendant is more morally depraved than the second?
The
Court's decision here stands in stark contrast to Atkins and Roper,
in which the Court concluded that characteristics of the affected defendants--mental
retardation in Atkins and youth in Roper--diminished their
culpability. … Nor is this case comparable to Enmund v.
With
respect to the question of the harm caused by the rape of child in relation to
the harm caused by murder, it is certainly true that the loss of human life
represents a unique harm, but that does not explain why other grievous harms
are insufficient to permit a death sentence. And the Court does not take the
position that no harm other than the loss of life is sufficient. The Court
takes pains to limit its holding to “crimes against individual persons” and to
exclude “offenses against the State,” a category that the Court
stretches--without explanation--to include “drug kingpin activity.” … But the
Court makes no effort to explain why the harm caused by such crimes is
necessarily greater than the harm caused by the rape of young children. This is
puzzling in light of the Court's acknowledgment that “[r]ape has a permanent
psychological, emotional, and sometimes physical impact on the child.” … As the
Court aptly recognizes, “[w]e cannot dismiss the years of long anguish that
must be endured by the victim of child rape.” …
The rape
of any victim inflicts great injury, and “[s]ome victims are so grievously
injured physically or psychologically that life is beyond repair.” … “The
immaturity and vulnerability of a child, both physically and psychologically,
adds a devastating dimension to rape that is not present when an adult is
raped.” … Long-term studies show that sexual abuse is “grossly intrusive in the
lives of children and is harmful to their normal psychological, emotional and
sexual development in ways which no just or humane society can tolerate.” …
It has
been estimated that as many as 40% of 7- to 13-year-old sexual assault victims
are considered “seriously disturbed.” … Psychological problems include sudden
school failure, unprovoked crying, dissociation, depression, insomnia, sleep
disturbances, nightmares, feelings of guilt and inferiority, and
self-destructive behavior, including an increased incidence of suicide. …
The deep
problems that afflict child-rape victims often become society's problems as
well. Commentators have noted correlations between childhood sexual abuse and
later problems such as substance abuse, dangerous sexual behaviors or
dysfunction, inability to relate to others on an interpersonal level, and
psychiatric illness. … Victims of child rape are nearly 5 times more likely
than nonvictims to be arrested for sex crimes and nearly 30 times more likely
to be arrested for prostitution. …
The harm
that is caused to the victims and to society at large by the worst child
rapists is grave. It is the judgment of the
III
In summary, the Court holds that the Eighth Amendment
categorically rules out the death penalty in even the most extreme cases of
child rape even though: (1) This holding is not supported by the original
meaning of the Eighth Amendment; (2) neither Coker nor any other prior
precedent commands this result; (3) there are no reliable “objective indicia”
of a “national consensus” in support of the Court's position; (4) sustaining
the constitutionality of the state law before us would not “extend” or “expand”
the death penalty; (5) this Court has previously rejected the proposition that
the Eighth Amendment is a one-way ratchet that prohibits legislatures from
adopting new capital punishment statutes to meet new problems; (6) the worst
child rapists exhibit the epitome of moral depravity; and (7) child rape
inflicts grievous injury on victims and on society in general.
The party
attacking the constitutionality of a state statute bears the “heavy burden” of
establishing that the law is unconstitutional. … That burden has not been
discharged here, and I would therefore affirm the decision of the Louisiana
Supreme Court.