If I were a child rapist, I guess I'd be glad to know that I had some of you guys on my side. Child rapists all over the country are standing up and cheering because of Kennedy and people like you. They get to keep on raping kids knowing that they won't be subjected to cruel punishment and they get to do it with a clean conscious knowing they don't have to kill their victims. Bad guys 1, children 0.

This is absolutely pathetic. I guess it's no wonder though, that someone named Kennedy would be oppossed to it.

Texas approved the death penalty for someone who was TWICE convicted of raping a child under the age of 14. You guys would rather give this person 3 hots and a cot and a chance of walking free someday than to put them to death? For their SECOND conviction?
Who knows what the standard penalty is now, life without parole is what I'd hope/guess. If that's the case and I were a child rapist, this is how I'd look at it. I rape this kid and I get caught, I get life without parole. If I kill him, I get the death penalty. Hmmmm, not much difference there as far as I'm concerned. If I kill him, I leave no witnesses, I risk the death penalty, but either way I'm spending the rest of my life in prison. So, I'm killing the kid and taking my chances. Do you see how this doesn't make sense? Do criminals really think this way? Who knows. But if it were me, I'm killing the kid and taking my chances.

What's really pathetic to me though is the fact that we're scared to punish a person because we think it will cause more crime. That's absolutley ridiculous. That's like saying, "maybe we should let men beat their wives, because if we punish them, they might go back and kill them". Sure, that happens, but we do the right thing and punish them anyway.

I certainly hope none of you who are cheering this decision as a good one are ever victims of this crime. I'd hate for your conscious to take a beating if this ever hit close to home.

__________________
24 Empty Missile Tubes, A Giant Mushroom Cloud...IT's MILLER TIME!