Media coverage of cert grant in Kennedy case

This post at How Appealing collects all the major media coverage of the Supreme Court's decision yesterday to review the constitutionality of state laws that make the death penalty a punishment for the crime of child rape (basics here).  Here's one snippet from the New York Times piece by Linda Greenhouse:

The new case, from Louisiana, is likely to be argued in April, meaning that during the course of its current term, the Supreme Court will be examining both the most common method of execution and a categorical question about which crimes are appropriate for the death penalty.

No one has been executed in the United States for a crime other than murder since 1964.  Of some 3,300 inmates of death row today, only two are facing execution for an offense that did not involve a killing. Both are on Louisiana’s death row. The Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal from one of them, Patrick Kennedy, who was convicted and sentenced to death in 2004 for raping his 8-year-old stepdaughter.

As I have detailed in a number of prior posts, I think the Kennedy case is in various ways a great and a terrible vehicle for considering these Eighth Amendment issues.  Also, I still believe, as I suggested in a prior post, that the "best" outcome in Kennedy would be for the Governor of Louisiana to commute Kennedy's sentence to life imprisonment in order to avoid this case from making bad law.

Some prior posts on the Kennedy litigation and the death penalty for child rape:

• Louisiana Supreme Court upholds death sentence for child rape
• Direct test of constitutionality of the death penalty for child rape
• A capital experiment spreading in the state laboratories
• Analysis of capital child rape laws
• Debating death for child rape
• Missouri Governor calls for child rape to be a capital offense
• Could there be symbolic and practical value in making repeat child rape a capital offense?