Stolen Boy’s Weblog

There has not been an execution in the United States for a crime that did not also involve the death of the victim in 44 years. And the United States Supreme Court has indicated there won’t be another under its watch.

Which is good news to Patrick Kennedy, the 43-year-old man who was sentenced to death for the rape of his 8-year-old stepdaughter in Louisiana. He is one of two people in the United States, both in Louisiana, who have been condemned to death for a rape that was not accompanied by a killing.

Which is why the Supremes were called into action in the first place. And which is why they struck down the Louisiana law that allows the execution of people convicted of raping a child.

In a 5-4 vote, the court ruled that the law allowing the death penalty to be imposed in cases of child rape violates the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The majority opinion couldn’t have been more dead on, as Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote: “The death penalty is not a proportional punishment for the rape of a child.”

What the majority didn’t say, though, is what’s really important here: That the death penalty is not the appropriate punishment to any crime.

What’s out of proportion is the court’s ruling earlier this year that ruled death penalty by lethal injection to be humane. This has opened the door to the resumption of executions in the United States, which is bad news to guys like Ryan Hoyt and Jesse James Hollywood.

Hoyt, the admitted shooter in the murder of 15-year-old Nicholas Markowitz in August of 2000, is on California’s death row. Hollywood, accused of orchestrating the murder, faces the death penalty through trial with the Santa Barbara County Superior Court.

States will soon begin executing condemned prisoners throughout the country. In California, however, executions have been on hold for more than two years and cannot resume until a federal judge reauthorizes the state to use its lethal injection chamber at San Quentin.

But this will end. The federal judge will eventually rule, and the moratorium will lift. Executions will resume in this state. Men like Hoyt will be prodded down the Green Mile for the last walk of their young lives. If Hollywood is convicted, and given the death sentence, he will soon follow Hoyt’s lead.

Which makes no sense. No justice will be served by state-supported murder. Nicholas Markowitz’s family will be no better off. Two more dead young men will do nothing to protect us. We will still need to live lives that are conducive to safety for our children and ourselves.

Which is why I wrote Stolen Boy. To show the human side to young troubled kids like Ryan Hoyt and Jesse James Hollywood. To show that these guys made tragic mistakes—that were human mistakes. Mistakes that were shared by their parents. Mistakes that were contributed to by the victim’s family. Mistakes that we all make in our own painful existences. Mistakes that do not become remedied by killing off the young, troubled personalities in our society who commit them.