Cert ‘Very Likely’ in Child Rape Death Penalty Case, Blog Says

U.S. Supreme Court practitioner Thomas Goldstein says the U.S. Supreme Court is “very likely” to grant cert in a case that asks whether it is constitutional to impose the death penalty for the rape of a child.

The lawyer makes his prediction about the Eighth Amendment case, Kennedy v. Louisiana, at SCOTUSblog.

The state of Louisiana is pressing to make convicted child rapist Patrick O. Kennedy the first inmate in more than four decades to be executed for a crime in which the victim wasn’t killed, the ABA Journal reported in January 2007. The Louisiana Supreme Court upheld the death penalty for Kennedy, convicted of raping his 8-year-old stepdaughter, according to the cert petition (PDF posted by SCOTUSblog).

The U.S. Supreme Court barred the death penalty for the rapist of a 16-year-old teen in a 1977 case, Coker v. Georgia.

The U.S. Supreme Court is now in winter recess. It will consider cert petitions at three conferences in January.