Kennedy v. Louisiana
| Kennedy v. Louisiana | |
|---|---|
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| Argued April 16, 2008 Decided June 25, 2008 |
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| Full case name | Patrick O. Kennedy v. State of Louisiana |
| Docket nos. | 07-343 |
| Citations | 554 U.S. 407 (more) |
| Argument | Oral argument |
| Prior history | Defendant convicted, sentenced, La. Dist. Ct., Aug. 26, 2003; aff'd, State v. Kennedy, 957 So.2d 757 (La. 2007); cert. granted, 552 U.S. 1087, 128 S. Ct. 829 (2008) |
| Procedural history | Writ of Certiorari to the Louisiana Supreme Court |
| Holding | |
| It is unconstitutional to impose the death penalty for the crime of raping a child, when the victim does not die and death was not intended. Louisiana Supreme Court reversed and remanded to lower court for resentencing. | |
| Court membership | |
| Case opinions | |
| Majority | Kennedy, joined by Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer |
| Dissent | Alito, joined by Roberts, Scalia, Thomas |
| Laws applied | |
| U.S. Const. amend. VIII; La. Stat. Ann. §14:42 | |
Kennedy v. Louisiana, 554 U.S. 407 (2008), was a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that held that the Eighth Amendment's Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause did not permit a state to punish the crime of rape of a child with the death penalty.
Patrick O'Neal Kennedy (born December 13, 1964), a man from Harvey, Louisiana in Greater New Orleans, was sentenced to death after being convicted of raping and sodomizing his eight-year-old stepdaughter. The rape was uncommonly brutal: it tore the victim's perineum "from her vaginal opening to her anal opening. [It] tore her vagina on the interior such that it separated partially from her cervix and allowed her rectum to protrude into her vagina. Invasive emergency surgery was required to repair these injuries." Kennedy maintained that the battery was committed by two neighborhood boys, and refused to plead guilty when a deal was offered to spare him from a death sentence. Nevertheless, he was convicted in 2003 and sentenced under a 1995 Louisiana law that allowed the death penalty for the rape of a child under the age of 12.
On appeal, Kennedy challenged the constitutionality of executing a person solely for child rape, and the Louisiana Supreme Court rejected the challenge on the grounds that the death penalty was not too harsh for such a heinous offense. The court distinguished the U.S. Supreme Court's plurality decision in Coker v. Georgia (1977), concluding that Coker's rejection of death as punishment for rape of an adult woman did not apply when the victim was a child. Rather, the Louisiana Supreme Court applied a balancing test set out by the U.S. Supreme Court in more recent death penalty cases, Atkins v. Virginia and Roper v. Simmons, first examining whether there is a national consensus on the punishment and then considering whether the court would find the punishment excessive. The Louisiana Supreme Court concluded that the adoption of similar laws in five other states, coupled with the unique vulnerability of children, satisfied Atkins and Roper.
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