just passing it on…
A blogger caught Justice Kennedy having made a really big error in modern Supreme Court history. In the death penalty child rape case, when he said that the death penalty for this crime was “against evolving standards” he overlooked, what a blogger found, that in 2006 Congress itself had made rape of a child a crime subject to the death penalty under the military code.
It turns out that Justice Kennedy’s confident assertion about the absence of federal law was wrong.
How can something be against “evolving standards” when Congress elected by the people of the land just endorsed it?
From the NYT article:
No one in the military has been charged with a capital crime yet under the revised provision. And despite the flurry of activity surrounding the death penalty, the military has not in fact executed anyone for decades. Its last execution took place on April 13, 1961, when Pvt. John A. Bennett was put to death by hanging. His crime: the rape of an 11-year-old girl.
