Yesterday, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled, by a 5-4 margin (as usual), that the death penalty cannot be used on rapists who do not commit murder.
This immediately affects a case in Louisiana, but Texas was prepared for this possibility.
The decision does not entirely overturn Jessica's Law in Texas, the statute named after Jessica Lunsford, a Florida girl who was abducted and killed in 2005. The ruling invalidates the Texas death provision, but legislators created a fallback position in the statute: Life without parole would apply if capital punishment for child rape was outlawed.
We're against the death penalty in every form, mainly because the idea of someone rotting in prison, closed up in a cubicle the size of our closet for decades on end seems way more fitting for a murderer than a few years in prison and then a quick, possibly painful death. And we read Dead Man Walking when we were about 13, so that could have something to do with it.
What do you think? Did the Supreme Court make the right call or are they whimps? Should the death penalty be legal at all?
Via the Dallas Morning News.