Capital Punishment for Child Rapists?

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Recently the Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty is unconstitutional for those who rape children. This ruling shows a remarkable clarity about the purpose of the death penalty and the role it plays in restoring retributive justice. Justice is the ordinate (balanced) desire for revenge - the desire to restore the balance that the crime took away, to give a punishment that fits the crime. More often, our culture is moved by the cardinal sin of anger - the inordinate desire for revenge that is born of hatred for the person who committed the crime, not just of the evil performed. Certainly the rape of children should provoke plenty of righteous anger, but the use of capital punishment would feed anger devoid of love - spite for the rapist as a person, the desire to see him "fry" for what he did. Such hatred is not healing and is not justice.

The Supreme Court is to be congratulated for taking what will obviously be an unpopular stance. Supporters of the death penalty and advocates for child abuse victims will both lament what they see as the weakening of the law. However, Catholics should recognize that killing the rapist does nothing to heal the wounds caused by the sin. Fostering hatred never heals.

Of course, there are those who would like to see the death penalty done away with completely. DeWayne Wickham, a syndicated columnist, wrote:

DEWANE WICKHAM: Recent death penalty ruling could backfire - Norwich, CT - Norwich Bulletin

According to Kennedy, the Supreme Court rejected the death penalty for rapists of children and ruled it constitutional for murderers because the harm murderers do is more severe and irrevocable.

That’s the troubling part of an otherwise commendable ruling. The Supreme Court justices could have struck down the death penalty for rapists of children without addressing the broader question of whether it’s constitutional in murder cases.

This sets back efforts to unite the United States with the rest of the industrialized world in banning capital punishment.

The death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment for rapists and murderers alike. It is an act of retribution that no government should mete out.

Wickham's conclusions may be partly right. Pope John Paul II declared in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae that the death penalty should indeed be abolished in countries that have the ability to protects its citizens without it. However, the Church has also defended the right of countries to have recourse to the death penalty when other options prove inadequate. Like any issue dealing with human life, criteria to apply the moral principles must be carefully followed. One important criterion found in the Just War Theory and in the principles surrounding the use of capital punishment is that recourse to deadly solutions should be the last resort. For this reason, promotion of the abolition of the death penalty in the United States is a valid position. However, we must be sure that our reasoning is sound.

One example of poor reasoning came from the opinion written by Justice Kennedy:

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.

According to Kennedy, a moral (or legal) issue such as capital punishment should be decided by "evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society." This post-Enlightenment idea assumes that traditional morality is backward and primitive and that society is becoming more enlightened as it matures. Some day we'll reach the level of society illustrated in the Star Trek series, when goodwill abounds, poverty is eradicated and there is no more need for money because everyone's needs are taken care of. Capital punishment was OK in the past because our brutish culture could stomach it, but it has less of a place in a more enlightened society. Collective sensibility is dangerous grounds on which to base moral and legal decisions. The fact is that most people in our "enlightened" society would like to see a child rapist fry, perhaps even more than we would like to see a murderer die. That would mean that the Supreme Court is arbiter not only of the law but of "civilized standards" as well. Besides, if a country that murders its own babies in the name of sexual freedom is more enlightened, we're in real trouble!

The opinion written by Justice Kennedy did make some valid points. I believe the Supreme Court's decision in this case to be the right one. However, Catholics must always strive to think rightly about these issues. We need to be sure to do the right thing for the right reasons.

Click here to read the opinion of someone who thinks the death penalty should be used for child rapists.