So Much For My Dream of Making Spamming a Capital Offense

You’ve probably already heard this, but just in case…quoting the New York Times:

The death penalty is unconstitutional as a punishment for the rape of a child, a sharply divided Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.[…]

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority, said there was “a distinction between intentional first-degree murder on the one hand and non-homicide crimes against individual persons,” even such “devastating” crimes as the rape of a child, on the other.

Hmmm….I wonder if spamming could be classified with treason as a crime against the state, which is also permitted to retain the death penalty under the ruling.

Seriously, I have issues with the death penalty on general principle, due to seeming inequities in its application, and due to the number of times that capital offense convictions have been overturned.  But, if  you are going to have a death penalty… I’m not sure that I agree that capital offenses require that the victim be a corpse.  If death is ever an appropriate punishment (and that’s a big “if”), the test of appropriateness should be heinousness.  There are some particularly vile crimes that don’t involve murder.

Justice Kennedy expressed concern that the criminal justice system would be bogged down if child-rape cases were capital offenses, or that family member victims/witnesses would be less likely to testify if the criminal was a family member and was up for the death penalty.   While those are valid concerns…isn’t that part of the reason why judges and district attorneys are given some latitude in prescribing sentences?