[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 5 (Tuesday, January 15, 2008)]
[House]
[Pages H7-H8]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    DEATH PENALTY FOR CHILD RAPISTS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Poe) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. POE. Madam Speaker, soon our United States Supreme Court will 
hear the case of Kennedy v. Louisiana and decide whether capital 
punishment is permitted in rape cases where the victim is a child that 
is 12 or under.
  Patrick Kennedy was sentenced in Louisiana to death after a jury 
convicted him of raping his own 8-year-old daughter. The facts show 
that he even tried to cover up the rape by cleaning up the evidence and 
then he blamed the rape on two neighborhood boys.
  New Louisiana law allows the death sentence for raping a child that 
is under the age of 12, so Kennedy v. Louisiana asks the Supreme Court, 
among other things, to decide whether the eighth amendment of the 
United States Constitution, the cruel and unusual punishment clause, 
permits a State to punish the crime of rape of a child under the death 
penalty.
  In 1977, the Supreme Court decided that a death sentence for rape of 
an adult woman was unconstitutional under a case called Coker v. 
Georgia. Coker really didn't discuss child rape, even though the victim 
in that case was 16 years of age. But since the Coker decision, State 
courts have interpreted it to limit death penalty crimes to certain 
murders. Those murders are what I call the murder-plus doctrine. There 
must not only be a homicide, but there must be some felony committed or 
some other unusual circumstance, like murder during a kidnapping, 
murder during a robbery, murder during a sexual assault, or murder of a 
police officer, and that is the doctrine that has been basically 
substantiated by the Supreme Court.
  However, last year, the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled that Coker v. 
Georgia doesn't apply in their particular case of capital punishment 
and rape cases when the victim is under 12 because it would still be 
murder-plus, murder plus the victim was under the age of 12; thus, it 
would fulfill the Supreme Court's requirements under the Constitution.
  No one has been executed in the United States for a crime other than 
murder since 1964. Many States, including my home State of Texas, 
before that time allowed the death penalty for robbery by firearm, 
kidnapping, and sexual assault. But since those days, only murder plus 
some other felony is allowed under our Constitution.
  There are approximately 3,300 inmates on death row in the United 
States, and only two of them face the death penalty for an event that 
did not involve a homicide as well as a felony, and those two are the 
two that are on Louisiana's death row. One is the petitioner in the 
upcoming Supreme Court case that the Supreme Court will decide very 
soon; the other is an individual by the name of Richard Davis, who was 
recently sentenced to death in Louisiana for sexually assaulting a 5-
year-old girl.
  Louisiana argues that the rape of a child is like no other crime. It 
also points out that the recent enactment of similar laws has occurred 
in other States such as Georgia, Montana, Oklahoma, South Carolina and 
Texas, my home State. Louisiana argues that it is compelling evidence 
of a national trend toward treating child rape as a distinct type of 
crime from other types of crimes.
  But the issue will be whether the Supreme Court will allow States to 
make this decision for themselves, or will the Supreme Court continue 
to mistakenly go down the path and rely on international law, as it did 
when it barred the death penalty for 17-year-olds in a case called 
Roper v. Simmons. In Texas, 17-year-olds are adults, but the Supreme 
Court said no longer can 17-year-olds be executed for any crime. 
Hopefully, the Supreme Court will quit using international law and 
decide whether it is constitutional or not to execute someone for 
raping a child under the age of 12 based on American jurisprudence and 
our Constitution.
  Madam Speaker, a death sentence fits the crime of child rape because 
a child rape victim suffers for the rest of their natural lives. Madam 
Speaker,

[[Page H8]]

before I came to Congress, I was a judge for 22 years in Texas, and 
before that I was a prosecutor.
  Many years ago, when I prosecuted cases, I prosecuted an individual 
who raped a 9-year-old. When her mother testified on the witness stand, 
she would not refer to the crime as rape or as sexual assault. She 
referred to that crime as a fate worse than death. And when she 
explained to the jury what that meant, she was saying that being 
sexually assaulted as a child is a fate worse than death. Hopefully our 
Supreme Court will not require a child victim to be murdered before the 
Supreme Court will allow the death penalty for the perpetrator, because 
it is, as this lady has testified many years ago, a fate worse than 
death. When a person commits a crime of sexual assault, they try to 
steal the soul of a victim.
  So, Madam Speaker, I support a State's right to decide for itself 
whether or not a child rapist should be executed or not, because 
children are more important than rapists.
  And that's just the way it is.

                          ____________________