Concerns raised over state's interest in death penalty for sex offenders

JIM DAVENPORT, Associated Press

COLUMBIA -- South Carolina appears headed to become the second state in the country to make some twice convicted sex offenders eligible for the death penalty, but some opponents say there might be unintended consequences to this emotional debate.

The House will take up during the next few weeks whether capital punishment should be an option to people convicted a second time of raping children younger than 11, and members say the crime's despicable nature is fanning death penalty talk.

The Senate already has approved the measure, and Gov. Mark Sanford announced his support.

"The stiffest penalty should be on the table in certain situations for child molesters," said Rep. Ted Pitts, who is pushing the legislation in the House. "Molesting children is always gong to be an emotional issue. It should be."

Louisiana has a law like the one proposed in South Carolina, and Oklahoma legislators are considering similar legislation.

But opponents of capital punishment say applying the ultimate penalty could lead to family members refusing to come forward and more rape victims being killed.

"It actually may create more death because the person facing the death penalty for this kind of offense might be inclined to say, 'No greater punishment incurred if I killed the victim," said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a group critical of death penalty laws.

Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Sacramento, Calif., often is at odds with Dieter's group.

But he said the death penalty shouldn't be imposed "simply to give the rapist an incentive not to kill the victim."

However, he is a strong death penalty advocate for people convicted of rape and murder.

It's difficult to take emotion out of this debate, "but that doesn't mean you should get carried away," he said.

Dieter says the emotion is akin to the era of vigilantism or lynching. "Sometimes you get the wrong person. Sometimes you are driven by prejudices," he said.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled the death penalty can't be used in cases involving adult rapes. But it has not weighed in on the 2003 death sentence of a Louisiana man for raping his 8-year-old stepdaughter.

Because the bulk of child rapes involve family members, the death penalty could make it more difficult for prosecutors because family members are less likely to come forward, Dieter said.

As the debate moves to the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Fletcher Smith said the bill is won't meet constitutional standards because a death isn't involved. "This is feel-good legislation," said Smith, D-Greenville.

But Pitts said there is more to it, including the high rate of repeat offenses.

The death penalty makes more sense in some cases, he said. "I don't know that spending 35-grand a year to keep them in prison when you're never going to let them out is the answer," Pitts said.

Dieter says the death penalty is no bargain, either. He cited a 1993 Duke University study that found North Carolina's capital cases cost $2 million more per execution than life sentence cases.