Bear with me on this one.
I am of the opinion that South Carolina's move to enact legislation providing for a death penalty for 2nd time sex offenses against children is a move in the wrong direction.
There's a very good reason why.
We are all in agreement that child molesterers should be SEVERELY punished the first time around and that there should be no opportunity for convicted sex offenders to do it again.
But, when the legal system is dealing with something like a child's memory to provide crucial evidence against someone who has done a sickening thing to them, traumatized them, done stuff that permanently affects their relationships with others, and possibly turns them into future sex offenders themselves (as studies have shown), the likelihood of the child's recollection being in error may have a major effect on a death-penalty case.
This margin for error is unacceptable.
People convicted of sex crimes against children should never be allowed to walk free again. But the states keep releasing them back into the general population after serving a too-short sentence.
What will happen when a person is executed for a second-time offense, then the child later changes his/her story and it turns out that it was someone else who did the crime?
No, this is a bad idea. They need to strengthen FIRST-TIME offense sentencing and keep a second time from happening. That's a better solution than the idea currently under discussion in South Carolina.
No comments:
Post a Comment