It was announced on the SCOTUSblog that the state of Louisiana filed a Petition for Rehearing on Monday for the case Kennedy v. Louisiana. In this case, the Supreme Court ruled that capital punishment for a defendant convicted of raping a child violates the Eighth Amendment. The Supreme Court reached its decision by [...]
Following colleagues’ posts, Why Death Penalty Won’t End Sexual Assault: A Social Work Perspective on Kennedy v Louisiana and Supreme Court Rejects Death Penalty for Child Rape, I’ll hazard a slightly different perspective.
As is too often the case, the analysis of the opinion in the media distorts what was actually decided or even what was [...]
It was reported today that the Supreme Court rejected the use of capital punishment for convicted child rapists as cruel and unusual in violation of the Eighth Amendement in the case Kennedy v. Louisiana. In the 5-4 decision written by Justice Anthony Kennedy and joined by Justices Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer, the Court [...]
The Children’s Defense Fund released a report last week, indicating that the cause of death for children and teens attributed to firearms has increased for the first time since 1994. It may be recalled that the Fund had filed an amicus brief in support of the District of Columbia’s handgun ban last January in the [...]
Marian Wright Edelman examined the problems that continue to plague the Texas Youth Commission and concludes that Congress Must Act to Protect Young Detainees from Abuse.
In recent years, the Children’s Defense Fund has received horrifying reports of the physical and sexual abuse of children and teens in juvenile correctional facilities. There are accounts of children [...]
