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Since the late 1900s, America has become an increasingly punitive society that sees fit to lock up its people — now almost one percent of us. Sex offenders are the latest category of villains for whom no sentence seems too harsh. The US federal sentencing guidelines make it official that photographing a 17-year-old boy with an erection earns a penalty about twice as severe as attempting to kill him — and about four times as severe as beating him up so badly that he accidentally dies.

See the SOLR report, Throwing Away the Key, for factual background on this issue.
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Note posted on August 24, 2007, updated January 10, 2008.

As of June 2008, six US states had passed legislation allowing the death penalty for non-murder cases of sexual activity with a juvenile: Georgia, Louisiana, Montana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas. Those laws have now been struck down by the US Supreme Court.

The first law that did this was in Louisiana:

Aggravated rape. Whoever commits the crime of … anal, oral, or vaginal sexual intercourse … [where] it is deemed to be without lawful consent of the victim because … the victim was under the age of thirteen years … [and where] lack of knowledge of the victim’s age shall not be a defense …, if the district attorney seeks a capital verdict, the offender shall be punished by death or life imprisonment at hard labor without benefit of parole, probation, or suspension of sentence, in accordance with the determination of the jury. From Louisiana Revised Statute 14:42, as amended by House Bill 55 in 1995,1 sections A(4) and D(2)(a)

So stated, a woman could be put to death for allowing a twelve-year-old boy to penetrate her.

The law was upheld by the Louisiana Supreme Court in 2007, but was then struck down in June 2008. The US Supreme Court ruled that capital punishment for crimes against individuals could only be used in cases of murder.

For more on this issue, see the following references.

• Louisiana jury sentences a man to death for non-murder crime, Champion Magazine, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, November 2003
• Better Dead than R(ap)ed?: The Patriarchal Rhetoric Driving Capital Rape Statutes by Corey Rayburn Yung, professor, John Marshall Law School, St. Johns Law Review, September 2004
• Louisiana v. Patrick Kennedy, Louisiana Supreme Court, May 22, 2007. The validity of the above law is discussed in the section on Capital Punishment for Non-Homicide Aggravated Rape on page 37 to 59. See also the dissenting opinion of Chief Justice Calogero in the last two pages of the same file.
• States Move to Enact Laws Allowing the Death Penalty for Pedophiles — A Good Sign with Respect to Public Dedication to Protecting Children, But Potentially Not the Most Effective Way to Do So — Writ, FindLaw, May 31, 2007
• Kennedy v. Louisiana by Anthony Kennedy, dissent by Samuel Alito, US Supreme Court, June 25, 2008 (Link. 554 U. S. ___ (2008), Argued 2008 04 16, decided 2008 06 25, modified 2008 10 01)
• Child rapists can't be executed, Supreme Court rules, CNN, June 25, 2008
• Toobin: Death penalty will be reserved for murderers, CNN, June 25, 2008

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1. House Bill 55 gives the age of the victim for the death penalty to apply as “under the age of twelve years,” whereas Statute 14:42 gives it as “under the age of thirteen years.” Presumably, there was an amendment that raised the age by a year after passage of House Bill 55.
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Note posted on August 24, 2007, major revision on May 11, 2008, September 7, 2008, updated January 28, 2009.