A Cowgirl Rides the Circuits: Retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor Puts her Band on Federal Appellate Courts

SUPREME COURT REPORT

Death for Rape, an Echo of the Past

In a busy month for criminal cases, SCOTUS looks once more at capital punishment

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BY DAVID G. SAVAGE

TWAS 44 YEARS AGO THIS SPRING THAT THE STATE

of Missouri put to death Ronald Wolfe for the crime of rape. Though no one could know it then, his execution would prove to be the end of an era. Rape had been a capital crime for

much of American history, and it remained so through the middle decades of the 20th century, almost exclu sively in the South. About nine of 10 of those sen tenced to death for rape during those years were black.

In 1977, a year after having restored the death penal ty as a constitutional punishment for murder, the U.S. Supreme Court branded death a cruel and unusual pun ishment for rape. The justices overturned a death sen tence for three-time rapist Ehrlich Coker and strongly suggested that only homicide qualifies as a capital crime. Coker’s victim was just 16 years old, but she was referred to as an “adult woman” in Cokerv. Georgia, 433

U.S. 584.

“We have the abiding conviction that the death pen alty, which is unique in its severity and irrevocability, is an excessive penalty for the rapist who, as such, does not take human life,” wrote Justice Byron \lhite.

On April 16, the court will reconsider that “abiding conviction” in the case of a convicted child rapist from Louisiana. Kennedy v. Louisiana, No. 07-343.

When Patrick Kennedy, a black man, was sentenced to die for the rape of his