Kennedy v. Louisiana: Justice Kennedy

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

          Justice Anthony Kennedy

Thank you to Justice Kennedy for framing the embodiment of judicial activism in your majority decision of Kennedy v. Louisiana.  It is not the Supreme Court’s stated job to decide what is and is not proportional.  Anyone is welcome to double check me on that one. 

Justice Kennedy – The question that was put to you is whether the death penalty is Constitutional or not.  Instead, you decided to rule on the “the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society”.  Really?  So, now the Supreme Court is going to be our societal arbitrator for decency? 

So, we are now a more decent and mature society because we will not impose capital punishment on an individual guilty of child rape (click the link for a description of the committed crime), to quote Justice Alito in the dissent, “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?”