Kennedy v. Louisiana

“Even if you agree with their bottom line, do Justice Kennedy and the justices in Kennedy v. Louisiana have a clue about how offensive it is to write this line in rationalizing why a man who has savagely raped his eight-year-old step-daughter should not be executed by the humane process of lethal objection: ‘Evolving standards of decency must embrace and express respect for the dignity of the person’... And as for their ‘proportional’ punishment argue, I think it’s silly on its face—read the almost unreadable (because it’s so excruciating) account of the rape and ask yourself whether it is really ‘disproportionate’ to administer lethal-objection execution to a man who committed this type of barbaric a sexual assault on a child. But let’s give him that one for argument’s sake. The Eighth Amendment talks about punishment that is cruel. First, punishment does not become cruel just because it’s disproportionate. And second, are we really striving here for proportionality? If a crime is cruel—as it clearly was in this case—wouldn’t a proportionate punishment also have to be cruel, and thus in violation of the Eighth Amendment?” —Andrew McCarthy