Death For Rapists?...I'm O.K. With That!
Convicted child rapist Kenneth Hinson, 47, has no kids of his own and
was extra-nice to neighborhood teens. So much so, that they called him
"Uncle Kenney."
Uncle Kenny owned a rural plot of land in South Carolina, and left his property open to kids who wanted to go camping, and would often cook out for the neighborhood, roasting marshmallows, fishing, and generally being a nice guy.
Maybe a little too nice.
None of the parents who let their kids go to Hinson's property knew that he had served nine years in prison for the rape of a 12-year old girl in 1991.
"My kids stayed down there, camped down there with him and cooked down there with him," said Donna McGee, who knew Hinson for four years. "Nobody ever suspected anything."
Then, two 17-year old girls escaped from his property last month, saying that he had kidnapped them, bound their mouths and hands with duct tape and raped them repeatedly in a shallow "dungeon" under a trapdoor in his tool shed.
Hinson was captured after a four day manhunt, when he turned up at his niece's house asking for a cigarette and a glass of water. She called 911, and he was arrested.
Unfortunately, since the girls were 17, Hinson does not fall under South Carolina's new law permitting the state to execute any sex offender caught raping a child 12 and under.
Gov. Mark Sanfor and South Carolina's attorney general both endorse the death penalty for child rapists. Three other states have laws allowing the death penalty for child rapists: Louisiana, Florida and Montana, but none have carried it out in over 30 years.
"There are a lot of people who would argue a rape of a child is tantamount to taking their life, because you deprive them of their childhood," said Jay Hodge, the prosecutor in Hinson's case. But "as a practical matter, I don't feel comfortable that the U.S. Supreme Court would go along with it."
I say the death penalty for child rapists should be automatic. In fact, I wouldn't mind if it were expanded to include all rapists. The act of rape is a violent, sociopathic display of contempt which destroys the life of the victim. Sure, some are able to recover, but they will never be the same again.
Uncle Kenny owned a rural plot of land in South Carolina, and left his property open to kids who wanted to go camping, and would often cook out for the neighborhood, roasting marshmallows, fishing, and generally being a nice guy.
Maybe a little too nice.
None of the parents who let their kids go to Hinson's property knew that he had served nine years in prison for the rape of a 12-year old girl in 1991.
"My kids stayed down there, camped down there with him and cooked down there with him," said Donna McGee, who knew Hinson for four years. "Nobody ever suspected anything."
Then, two 17-year old girls escaped from his property last month, saying that he had kidnapped them, bound their mouths and hands with duct tape and raped them repeatedly in a shallow "dungeon" under a trapdoor in his tool shed.
Hinson was captured after a four day manhunt, when he turned up at his niece's house asking for a cigarette and a glass of water. She called 911, and he was arrested.
Unfortunately, since the girls were 17, Hinson does not fall under South Carolina's new law permitting the state to execute any sex offender caught raping a child 12 and under.
Gov. Mark Sanfor and South Carolina's attorney general both endorse the death penalty for child rapists. Three other states have laws allowing the death penalty for child rapists: Louisiana, Florida and Montana, but none have carried it out in over 30 years.
"There are a lot of people who would argue a rape of a child is tantamount to taking their life, because you deprive them of their childhood," said Jay Hodge, the prosecutor in Hinson's case. But "as a practical matter, I don't feel comfortable that the U.S. Supreme Court would go along with it."
The Supreme Court in 1977 overturned the death sentence of a Georgia man condemned for raping an adult woman. It declared that execution "is an excessive penalty for the rapist who, as such, does not take human life."
I say the death penalty for child rapists should be automatic. In fact, I wouldn't mind if it were expanded to include all rapists. The act of rape is a violent, sociopathic display of contempt which destroys the life of the victim. Sure, some are able to recover, but they will never be the same again.
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Comment by Cate— 2006/04/21 @ 06:24 PM — (Reply)
Comment by Brooke— 2006/04/21 @ 06:35 PM — (Reply)
a men sistah, you should ice those honkies.
Comment by tyrone biggums— 2006/04/21 @ 09:21 PM — (Reply)
Comment by Susan— 2006/04/21 @ 09:37 PM — (Reply)
But you're right, although what he did is his responsibility, I don't know about letting my kids go over to that "nice guy's" house who lives out in the middle of nowhere by himself, with no wife or kids.
Comment by Brooke— 2006/04/22 @ 05:33 AM — (Reply)
In India a law for mandatory death penalties for rapists was overturned when a panel suggested it might cause the rapist to kill his victim to stop her testifying against him. But there’s a simple answer: if the rapist allows the victim to survive the state guarantees him a quick and painless death; but if he kills her he gets tortured to death slowly over a period of several days. Assuming the torture is sufficiently gruesome and well-known, I doubt very much any rapist would dare kill his victim since he’d always worry about forensics finding him out and dread his final hours.
Another opposing view given to mandatory death penalties is that it would be a tragedy to kill an innocent person who had been wrongfully convicted. To this I say: by all accounts, wrongful convictions are a tiny minority of cases; whereas rape is a fairly common and heinous crime - the good simply outweighs the bad.
Some people say that the burden of proof is higher in death penalty cases and so conviction would be harder to obtain. Well, that’s simple enough to solve. Just fire all those lenient sissy liberal judges and replace them with hard-headed, conservative lawmakers without an ounce of sympathy in their bodies for criminals who, for the same evidence that might have sent a scumbag to jail for 10 years, would happily send him to the deathhouse.
Lastly, most rapes are committed by family members. Well - KILL THEM! Execute them, eliminate them - family or not - rid the gene pool of these sick twisted psychos who go about destroying the lives of their relatives. I think that, if anything, a father who rapes his daughter for 12 years is far far worse than a rapist who rapes a woman once off the street - both crimes deserve death, but the father tortured his victim for *years* and so death is an even easier conclusion to reach.
And the very worst crimes - those involving rapists who kidnap and enslave their victims for years - deserve the harshest penalties. Perhaps boiling the rapist in a weak acid starting with their lower extremities combined with a slow exsanguination would be in some way appropriate.
Look.. my views arent actually extreme - they're logical and reasonable. Rape is a terrible terrible crime, and so it requires a terrible terrible solution; and if society doesnt muster the guts to employ that solution rape will continue to happen and the victims will continue to pile up. To be blunt, the state must act and it must act without mercy just as those rapists act every day without mercy.
Comment by David— 2007/10/23 @ 01:25 AM — (Reply)