[Erin] A difficult decision

A little later today, the Supreme Court will issue a ruling dealing with gun control laws and the Second Amendment, which should be interesting to read.

Yesterday, of course, they issued a ruling on the death penalty, ruling that the rape of a child was not enough, on its own, to justify sentencing a criminal to death:

Writing for the court majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy said the Constitution barred a state from imposing the death penalty for the rape of a child when the crime did not result, and was not intended to result, in the victim's death.

He said a national consensus exists against capital punishment for the crime of child rape and that the death penalty, based on current evolving standards, should be reserved for the worst crimes that take the victim's life.

"When the law punishes by death, it risks its own sudden descent into brutality, transgressing the constitutional commitment to decency and restraint," he wrote.

The court was divided among ideological lines, with the five more liberal justices voting with the majority, and Roberts, Alito, Scalia and Thomas dissenting.

Interestingly, in a rare moment of agreement, both McCain and Obama disagreed with the Court's decision:

Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain said the "ruling is an assault on law enforcement's efforts to punish these heinous felons for the most despicable crime."

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama said he disagreed with the ruling.

"Had the Supreme Court said, 'We want to constrain the abilities of states to do this to make sure that it's done in a careful and appropriate way,' that would have been one thing. But it basically had a blanket prohibition and I disagree with that decision," Obama told a news conference in Chicago.

I agree with the Supreme Court on this one. It's a little uncomfortable finding myself in alignment with the liberal justices, and opposed not only to the conservative ones but to both major presidential candidates as well. But the truth is, this decision was right.

It was right, first of all, in a Constitutional sense. While it's pretty much been settled that the death penalty alone doesn't violate the Constitution's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, the tendency to see it as a proper response only to murder has, I think, been a move in the right direction. Child rape remained the only crime for which the death of the victim was not a consideration. Certainly the thought of abuse to children stirs our emotions to the boiling point--but that's no reason, in and of itself, to abandon the principles of law or to allow emotion to rule in the sentencing of those who commit these terrible crimes.

I think, too, that it was right in a practical sense. If a child rapist knows he can be executed for the crime whether or not he murders his young victim, what is to stop him from taking that dreadful step, in the event he fears discovery?

But most of all, I think it was right in a moral sense. I have read the writings of the late Pope John Paul II on the death penalty, and while it took me some considerable time to work out my thoughts in this area, I came to see his preference in favor of punishments that do not take the life of the criminal, in most instances, as wise, a blending of justice with mercy. It is hard to feel at all merciful to those who rape children; it is easy to demand that they pay with their lives for the harm and suffering they have caused. But ending the life of their abusers will not restore to the victims what was so cruelly taken from them, their innocence and even their childhood itself; nor is it necessary as an alternative to lifelong incarceration, a penalty I do most strongly support for anyone convicted of raping a child.

Ultimately, our use of the death penalty will always say something profound about us as a nation and a society. The Catholic Church does not teach that capital punishment is always wrong; the Church has taught that the State in its sovereign power has the right to impose this ultimate penalty when it is justly required. But what constitutes a just reason to take another person's life is going to be a reflection of our culture's values, and while most of us would agree that some particularly heinous murders have risen to that level of just reason, I'm hesitant to think that any other crime, no matter how despicable, ought to trigger that most solemn decision to deprive the guilty of life itself.