LA- Jeff DA will fight to execute child rapists

7-21-2008 Louisiana:

Jefferson Parish District Attorney Paul Connick Jr. said this afternoon he will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to revisit last month's ruling that struck down the death penalty for child rape, saying justices in the majority failed to consider that the military allows that punishment for that crime.

The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, outlawed executing child rapists in the case of Patrick Kennedy, a Harvey man who was convicted and sentenced to die in 2003.

Connick's decision is based on the high court failing to consider that military law allows the death penalty to be used for child rape, he said in a prepared statement his office released to news media this afternoon.

Supreme Court justices in the majority in part based their decision on whether there's a national trend in favor of executing child rapists. Justices found there is not, ruling that only six states have laws that capitalize child rape.

A week after the ruling, The New York Times reported that that justices, as did lawyers who filed briefs in the case, overlooked the military law, which Congress adopted in 2006.

Kennedy was convicted and sentenced to die under a 1995 Louisiana law that allows the death penalty when the victim is under age 12. The age was later changed to age 13. The crime happened in his Woodmere Subdivision him in 1998, involving a girl who was 9 years old at the time. ..News Source.. by Paul Purpura, The Times-Picayune

The petition for rehearing in Kennedy v. Louisisna (07-343) is here.