Exodus 21:23–27

This week the United States Supreme Court granted certiorari in Kennedy v. Louisiana (07-343), a case in which the Court will decide whether our evolving standards of justice and decency requires the Court to find that the death sentence constitutes cruel and unusual punishment when it is imposed upon a defendant for a crime in which the victim was not killed.

Although rare today, until the late mid-20th century several states, particularly those in the deep South, provided for the death penalty in cases other than murder. The most typical situation was when the charge was aggravated rape and the defendant was a black man and the victim was a white woman.

Patrick Kennedy was sentenced to death in Louisiana for raping a minor. The Louisiana Supreme Court upheld the death sentence. Although the Court’s conservatives still firmly support the death penalty, and the facts of the crime are aggravated, the death penalty appears to be on its final legs in the Western World and this should be a win for the defense as the liberal wing of the Court is likely to be joined by religious jurists, who will give more than lip service to the biblical belief in “an eye for an eye," Exodus 21:23-27, and hold that death is only an appropriate sanction when death is the result.