The Tulsa Beacon reports, "New bill could give death penalty to repeat child molesters."
State lawmakers voted to increase the penalties - including life in prison and death - facing repeat child molesters.
House Bill 2965, by state Rep. Rex Duncan, would expand the penalties for child molesters, allowing repeat offenders to face life in prison without parole or the death penalty.
“The death penalty is the ultimate deterrent and reserved for worst of the worst criminals,” said Duncan, a Sand Springs Republican who chairs the House Judiciary Committee. “Individuals with a history of violently raping children clearly fall into that category and should face a punishment equal to their crime.”
Under current law, a child molester can face a sentence of 25 years to life for a first offense. Duncan’s legislation will increase the penalty to include a maximum sentence of life without parole.
His legislation will also allow the death penalty to be considered for those convicted of a second or subsequent offense. That provision has been crafted to comply with recent court rulings.
The legislation will also eliminate the “homeless defense” as an excuse for not registering as a sex offender and allow those convicted of failure to register to receive a 20-year prison sentence.
Earlier coverage of the Oklahoma legislation begins with this post; full information on HB 2965 at this LINK. Related posts, including all Kennedy v. Louisiana coverage, are in the Jessica's Law index. As I have noted previously, for those who doubt the full sweep of the 2008 Supreme Court ruling, revisiting National News Coverage of Kennedy v. Louisiana, might help clarify. Perhaps these excerpts from Justice Anthony Kennedy's opinion in Kennedy v. Lousiana would be enlightening:
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," Coker, 433 U. S., at 598 (plurality opinion), they cannot be compared to murder in their "severity and irrevocability." Ibid.
After a lengthy discussion of problems involving a child victim's participation in a capital prosecution, Justice Kennedy concludes:
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.
Surely, Oklahoma lawyer-legislators know better.
Comments