The gov­er­nor of Missouri, Matt Blunt, has pro­posed that his state expand the death penal­ty to include cas­es of sex­u­al assault against chil­dren where the vic­tim is not killed. However, accord­ing to an edi­to­r­i­al in the Springfield News-Leader, such a law would not pro­tect chil­dren. Instead, it could make it less like­ly that these offens­es would be report­ed, would put the child in dan­ger of even worse crimes, and would involve the child and the fam­i­ly in years of death penal­ty lit­i­ga­tion. The edi­to­r­i­al cites the opin­ions of a lead­ing child advo­cate and a pros­e­cu­tor in urg­ing cau­tion about such a law. In addi­tion to the sig­nif­i­cant pol­i­cy con­sid­er­a­tions, the U.S. Supreme Court is cur­rent­ly con­sid­er­ing whether such a law would be con­sti­tu­tion­al.

The edi­to­r­i­al fol­lows:
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To bet­ter pro­tect chil­dren, Gov. Matt Blunt says we need a new law allow­ing child rapists to be executed.

In mak­ing his pitch, Blunt con­tin­u­al­ly uses the words ​“pro­tect­ing our children.”

Unfortunately, no mat­ter how well mean­ing he might be, the gov­er­nor’s pro­posed broad­en­ing of the appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty may make it more dif­fi­cult to protect children.

Legislators have been jump­ing on the band­wag­on, say­ing they will sup­port a Senate bill spon­sored by Jack Goodman, R- Mount Vernon, that calls for any­one con­vict­ed of forcible rape or forcible sodomy of a child under 12 to be put to death.

That’s some­what pre­dictable. What sane politi­cian in this state wants to be seen as pro-deviant?

Still, if you lis­ten to those who work most close­ly on child rape cas­es, you will learn they have con­cerns about the proposed law.

Creating a death penal­ty for child sex­u­al offend­ers, could, in their view:

- Cause a decrease in calls report­ing attacks on chil­dren, because those mak­ing the reports will fear it could lead to death for the suspect;

- Frighten child vic­tims out of com­ing for­ward know­ing their accounts could lead to an exe­cu­tion, espe­cial­ly when a case involves a family member;

- Tighten rules of evi­dence in child rape cas­es, because flex­i­bil­i­ty and for­give­ness have been built into laws regard­ing tes­ti­mo­ny from children;

- Create more scruti­ny of con­vic­tions, with minor errors tak­ing on more grav­i­ty and per­haps trig­ger­ing new tri­als and appeals;

- Cause much more time to be expend­ed by pros­e­cu­tors and, often, pub­licly fund­ed defense attorneys;

- Force chil­dren to spend many more years deal­ing with a case, because cap­i­tal cas­es pro­duce many more appeals;

- Heighten the chance that an offend­er will kill a vic­tim to avoid being identified.

That lat­ter con­cern came to mind for Barbara Brown, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Child Advocacy Center, as she dealt with the case involv­ing the 7‑year-old alleged­ly attacked by Jeffrey Dickson.

He’s a 36-year-old Springfield man charged with child kid­nap­ping, forcible rape and two counts of forcible sodomy. Prosecutors say he took the 7‑year-old from a Springfield home ear­li­er this month to anoth­er home in the city where he drugged her, choked and sex­u­al­ly attacked her, leav­ing her for dead in a house he set ablaze.

Brown, who has worked with child vic­tims for almost a decade, wor­ries a per­son who is capa­ble of that kind of vicious attack might not hes­i­tate to inflict fatal injuries if the pos­si­ble penal­ty is death anyway.

“It takes away the incen­tive to leave a child alive,” she said.

Greene County Prosecutor Darrell Moore cit­ed some of the con­cerns list­ed above as he offered his opin­ions on the pro­posed law. He added he can­not under­stand why the move has been made to try to broad­en Missouri’s use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment at a time when ques­tions of the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of a sim­i­lar law are pend­ing before the U.S. Supreme Court in a Louisiana case.

Should the court rule unfa­vor­ably toward expan­sion of the penal­ty in that case, work by Missouri’s law­mak­ers will be moot.

If the leg­is­la­ture is doing more than just pos­tur­ing with its talk of a death penal­ty for child rapists, law­mak­ers must first engage in seri­ous, ana­lyt­i­cal dis­cus­sion with those most direct­ly affect­ed: child advo­cates, pros­e­cu­tors and police.

Viewed in sim­ple terms, the ques­tion of being for or against pun­ish­ment for those who would ter­ror­ize, hurt and seek cal­lous plea­sure from chil­dren is easy.

But this is far from a simple issue.

Those who deal with it judi­cial­ly know that. Those who deal with it leg­isla­tive­ly ought to know it, too.

(Editorial, ​“Execution of child rapists will not pro­tect our chil­dren,” Springfield (Missouri) News-Leader, April 28, 2008). See Kennedy v. Louisiana and Recent Legislation.

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