Patrick Kennedy has got Company

While Kennedy's case will soon be discussed in USSC conference, a second man has been sentenced to death for child rape in Louisiana.  Sentencing Law & Policy points us to the story:

A man proscutors say used a 5-year-old girl as a sex toy for him and his girlfriend made history Wednesday by being sentenced to die.

Richard Davis, a 35-year-old Ohio native, listened but did not make eye contact as each Caddo juror verbally confirmed his sentence.

It was only two days ago that the same group of nine women and three men spent 1½ hours deliberating before convicting Davis of aggravated rape for repeatedly sexually assaulting the child from October 2004 to January 2005.

This actually represents bad news for Kennedy in a very real sense.  If the USSC follows the methodology it used in Coker (if it takes the Kennedy case), the Court will look to various indicators of society's willingness to apply the death penalty for child rape to determine our evolving standards of decency.  One of those indicators is the decisions by juries to apply capital punishment in such cases.  The Davis case adds another data point to the proposition in favor of the constitutionality of capital child rape statutes.