According to the Court, why is death a disproportionate penalty for child rape?
Patrick Kennedy was convicted of the aggravated rape of his eight-year-old stepdaughter under a Louisiana statute that authorized capital punishment for the rape of a child under 12 years of age and was sentenced to death. On his appeal, the Supreme Court of Louisiana affirmed. Kennedy petitioned for certiorari, which was granted. The U.S. Supreme Court reversed and remanded.
At 9:18 A.M. on March 2, 1998, Patrick Kennedy called 911 to report that his stepdaughter, L. H., had been raped. When police arrived at Kennedy’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. Kennedy told police he had carried her from the yard to the bathtub and then to the bed. Once in the bedroom, Kennedy had used a basin of water and a cloth to wipe blood from the victim.
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 Kennedy maintained in their accounts to investigators that L. H. had been raped by two neighborhood boys. L. H . was interviewed several days after the rape by a psychologist. 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; then 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.