Response to Rick on Non-Murder Crimes and the Death Penalty

In response to Rick's comment about the constitutionality of the death penalty for child rape:  I don't follow this area closely, and perhaps the Court will just apply Coker.  However, apparently four states since 1997 have added the death penalty for child rape, and I had heard talk that this might be that case where the "society's developing views" approach might turn around and uphold a death-penalty statute.  It's all up to Anthony Kennedy's gut feeling, and who knows what that is.

Rick also asks why "taking a life by execution cannot be appropriate redress for a crime that does not involve the taking of a life" (my proposition).  I'm no expert on this either, but ... I would think that the only retributive argument for the death penalty that can succeed in maintaining the value of human life is the argument that unjust taking of a life is so serious to society that only the response of taking the aggressor's life can communicate that seriousness.  (The "disorder introduced," to employ the terminology of the Catechism 2266-2267, is so serious that only the death penalty can "redres[s]" it.)  I don't buy that argument in our context; I agree (see here) with those who say that because of poor legal representation, racial disparities, vengeful chants outside prisons during executions, etc., the use of death penalty tends to communicate more that some human lives can just be thrown away.  But whatever one thinks about those points, the different argument that "we should take the defendant's life because s/he has done a really, really horrible thing" seems to me far, far less likely over time to preserve the sense of the value of human life, and far more likely to erode it.  "A really horrible thing" is a pretty fuzzy standard that could encompass different acts for different people, even if the rape of a stepchild is a clear case.  I would think that Catholics -- and even those who want retribution to be more determinative than it is in the Catechism -- should want a bright line, as Rick posited the Court might want on the constitutional issue, to constrain society's resort to the taking of life.

Tom