The only man on death row for a non-homicide sex crime had his arguments heard by the Louisiana Supreme Court:
Jefferson Parish has prosecuted about a dozen people under the law, but either the defendants reached plea bargains or juries did not call for death, she said.
She said this case was different because the child's injuries were so severe she needed surgery. The man called his office to say he would be late to work and ask about removing blood because "his little girl had become a young lady," Clark said.
While she bled, he spent two hours trying to get rid of evidence in his house and staging a crime scene next door before he called for help, Clark said.
Ben Cohen of the Capital Appeals Project of Louisiana said the evidence was circumstantial and that the trial was fraught with errors, including that prosecutors left the crying girl alone on the witness stand in front of the jury for five minutes. That improperly prejudiced the jury, Cohen said, but LaDart refused to grant several requests for a mistrial.
"The legal errors alone prevented the jury from making a fair, dispassionate determination," Cohen said.
He also said that during the trial's penalty phase, one prosecutor improperly told the jury that the girl "is asking you to set a time and place for when he dies, to turn out the lights," when neither she nor her mother ever told investigators whether they supported the death penalty.
Crime & Consequences remarks about the case that:
The story incorrectly states that "the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1977 that murder was the only crime for which the death penalty was constitutional." In fact, in Coker v. Georgia, 433 U.S. 584, 597 (1977), the Court expressly limited its holding to adult-victim rape cases.
I think Crime & Consequences is over-stating and possibly mis-stating the holding in Coker. There have been numerous law review articles debating the point and there is no consensus on the issue. I agree that the article mis-states the holding in Coker (it doesn't definitely state that non-homicide crimes cannot be punished by death). However, to say the Court "expressly limited its holding to adult-victim rape cases" just seems wrong to me. Louisiana's Supreme Court certainly agreed with C&C in State v. Wilson, 685 So.2d 1063 (La. 1996), but even that court didn't even feel the issue was clear. The facts of Coker where such that the court was addressing a man sentenced to death for the rape of an adult woman. However, there is nothing in the opinion that I remember that says if the victim had been a minor the outcome would have been different.
"The facts of Coker were such that the court was addressing a man sentenced to death for the rape of an adult woman." I think the "woman" in Coker was actually 16 despite the Supreme Court's repeated statement that she was an adult woman. I suppose 16 qualifies for being adult in some cases, but the general public is unlikely, in my opinion, to consider a 16 year old a woman. And the Supreme Court draws the line for juvenile death sentences at 18, making it at least plausible that this is a relevant historical fact.
Posted by: Adam | March 05, 2007 at 07:16 PM