Obama Supports Death Penalty in Child Rape Cases

by Damozel |Oh, dear Lord.  I wasn't going to comment on the Supreme Court's (correct) decision in a death penalty case involving the rape of a child. 

It's one of those issues that people can't really discuss rationally.  Americans are not rational when it comes to anything relating to children, rape, or the death penalty; I know it well.  But this one is an easy call for me, since I oppose the death penalty in all cases and circumstances and for any reason.  It's barbaric and separates us from civilized nations.  I oppose it on religious grounds, so I can't claim to be rational either.  I feel this strongly.  I can't even read the blood-thirsty rantings from right wingers on this issue without wanting to throw up.  If you want to, Memeorandum has plenty of links.

So now....now Barack Obama has expressed disagreement with the Supreme Court's decision.  Here's his comment, via Michael Powell of The New York Times.

Mr. Obama, whose position on the death penalty has changed over the years (his staff prefers the verb “evolved”), said that child rape qualifies as “heinous” and therefore as subject to the death penalty.

“I disagree with the decision; I have said repeatedly that I think the death penalty should be applied in very narrow circumstance for the most egregious of crimes.” Obama told forty or so reporters. “I think that the rape of a small child, six or eight years old, is a heinous crime, and if a state makes a decision under narrow limited well defined circumstance the death penalty is at least potentially applicable,

In 1996, Mr. Obama went on the record opposing the death penalty and he wrote in his most recent memoir, “The Audacity of Hope” that the penalty “does little to deter crime.” By the time he ran for the U.S. Senate in 2004, he had come out in favor of the death penalty, saying that society has the right to express its outrage at heinous crimes.  (NYT)

'That is total populist crap,' said my mild-mannered British spouse (a special constable with London's Metropolitan Police for 10 years) when I read Obama's remarks aloud to him.  Does Obama think the Brits, who do not have a death penalty, as well as all the other EU countries ---which outlaw the death penalty under all circumstances --- don't know how to 'express outrage'?  Or that they don't punish criminals in a manner appropriate to the crimes? 

am not yet prepared to express my outrage about this.  What is more of an outrage than to make the sexual violation and suffering of a child the occasion of a state-sanctioned murder? 

The death penalty is not about expressing outrage but about sanctioning vengeance.  That is not something a civilized  people should do. Nor is it an outcome that people who call themselves Christian should tolerate.  (I can't be sure about other religions, but I do feel qualified to have an opinion about my own.)

I have been making excuses right and left for Obama, but I am not going to excuse him for this one.  Since McCain agrees, there's nowhere for me to turn.

DEEP HEALING BREATHS....DEEP HEALING BREATHS....

At Talk Left, Jeralyn says:

Where is Sen. Barack Obama on the death penalty? With Justices Alito, Scalia and Thomas....He sounds just like John McCain.

Disappointing? Yes. Predictable? Also yes.

I wonder whether this means that the pro-death penalty stance John Kerry insisted be removed from the Democratic party platform in 2004 will be making a return. I don't doubt it.

Obama mischaracterizes today's decision as a state's rights issue. It's not. It's an 8th Amendment issue of cruel and unusual punishment in which the evolving standards of decency of a civilized nation must be taken into account.

Instaputz too is appalled.  He points out that in The Audacity of Hope, Obama says he supports the death penalty for child rape, 'so heinous, so beyond the pale, that the community is justified in expressing the full measure of its outrage by meting out the ultimate punishment."  But as Instaputz rightly says:

The problem, of course, is defining what constitutes a crime "so heinous, so beyond the pale..."

I know I can't, which is among the reasons I find it easy to be a staunch opponent of the death penalty.  ('Obama's Bad Week')

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Comments

[Danny]

oh brother this guy is a real champion of democratic values, alright.

I also oppose the death penalty in all cases for many reasons and agree with the 5 justices on the winning side of this issue if there is a "winner" in this decision. I guess this is Obama's attempt at going after the "working class" vote because God knows "they all" believe in the death penalty (ya sure ya betcha). And then there are civil rights and the FISA bill. Obama is incredibly calculating trying to be all things to all people for everyone. He is going to get hammered in November - just like McGovern. Because he loses people in drips as he flips and flops and he won't even see the loss coming.

[Adam]

Personally, I've taken a long and slow path toward opposing the death penalty. I still don't have a deep moral/deontological objection to the death penalty. But I don't see it as a moral good, either. The bottom line is that the death penalty is not a deterrent to crime, it damages our reputation as a nation, it costs more to execute someone than to imprison them for life, and there's the unconscionable risk of executing an innocent person.

What you're left with is a need for vengeance and a desire to make the punishment "fit the crime" in some sense. Of course, if those were our only guides, we could justify death by torture, something an overwhelming majority of people would find repulsive. So those ideas constitute a terribly weak justification for the death penalty.

All of that said, I'd have a very hard time arguing that Adolf Eichmann should not have been executed. But just because I can justify the most easily justified example in history of the use of the death penalty, doesn't mean it should be a widely applied state policy.

---

Sadly, this fits in Obama's FISA strategy of "clearing the battlefield" of any distraction issues, so that he can clobber McCain on the economy and the war. It might be a good general election strategy, but it doesn't make me happy to hear these sorts of tacking-to-the-center comments.

The bottom line is that we're not going to see federal action on the death penalty in the next four years. The only impact a president Obama will have on this issue is appointing the replacements for Stevens and Ginsburg. No matter what he says about this particular ruling, the overwhelming weight of his statements on issues of constitutional law point toward the appointment of judges who would fit on the left wing of the current court.

So I'm not terribly worried by this. Disappointed, sure, but not worried. Unlike his FISA (in)action, which has real consequences, this is basically just standard general election maneuvering.

[Ajlouny]

Your right, this topic can't be discussed rationally. There is a passionate feeling that a parent gets when their child is raped, and it is irrational, but in some minds completely justified.