Kennedy Vs Louisiana, 5554 US

The reason as to why I chose this case was because of the type of justice rendered to the crime suspect, even though the new laws had already been adopted, and the courts hads done away with the old forms of law (Fisher & Harriger, 2009). This was a rape case, whereby Kennedy, from Harvey Louisiana, was found guilty of both raping and sodomizing his own child who was eight year old, thus being sentenced to death. The evil act had been conducted in the year 1988, where the victim was left with a lot of injuries. The child’s perineum, was tone thus separating her vagina from the cervix. The child’s rectum had protruded through her vagina, thus making her to bleed profusely. A quick surgery was however conducted in order to save the child’s life. According to the new laws, a person can only be sentenced to death, if the offence led to death. In this case, the victim did not die. Moreover, a quick surgery was conducted in order to protect the victim’s life and she became well. This law was however not applied by the Supreme Court when rendering the judgement, simply because the victim was a child (Fisher & Harriger, 2009). The type of judgement rendered was through the application of an old law which had been done away with, thus making it insensible to use a law which had been dropped, and a new version of the had been adopted. I am not in any way advocating for rape against children, but what I am trying to say is that the law should be followed to the latter, even though a case might involve a very serious crime.

Reference

Fisher, L., & Harriger, K. J. (2009). American constitutional law. Durham, N.C: Carolina Academic Press.

Kirchmeier, J. L. (2015). Imprisoned by the past: Warren McCleskey and the American death penalty.