SAUL GONZALEZ, correspondent: Los Angeles County’s Twin Towers Correctional Facility: it’s one of the largest jails in the country. Behind its walls, over 3,000 men are locked up as their criminal prosecutions continue. Many prisoners are accused of committing murder, rape, and a variety of gang-related crimes. However, this jailhouse is also a house of worship to Dennis Gibbs, a senior chaplain at Twin Towers. His Sunday services are like few others, held in a cell block and closely watched by sheriff’s deputies.

CHAPLAIN DENNIS GIBBS: I think this is a holy place. I believe that we are standing on holy ground. This is a place of reconciliation and healing, and so I really see this as—in many ways this is my parish.

GONZALEZ: Chaplin Gibbs is one of dozens of clergy men and women from a variety of faiths who offer pastoral care and spiritual guidance to the inmates at Twin Towers. Although an Episcopalian, Chaplain Gibbs provides spiritual counseling to all prisoners who approach him, no matter what their particular faith.

GIBBS (speaking to prisoner): Hey, man, how is it going? Good to see you again.

PRISONER: Could you say a little prayer for me and my girl, my baby?

GONZALEZ: Although the chaplain doesn’t condone what these men are accused of doing, he also doesn’t apologize for showing them compassion.

GIBBS (praying with prisoner): God the Holy Spirit be upon you and remain with you forever.

GIBBS: These men are wounded, these men are orphans, and these men are largely forgotten, and I think it’s powerful that we bring church to them and remind them that they are a part of our community, and that they are beloved by God.

CARLOS ORTIZ: You build a bond, I’d say, with the chaplain. You build a bond of friendship.

GONZALEZ: Carlos Ortiz, who’s been at Twin Towers for six months, was recently convicted of drug possession. He says Chaplin Gibbs and other jailhouse clergy help inmates sustain and develop their faith when they need it the most.

ORTIZ: If you don’t have faith, they provide faith. You know, I am a man of faith, so just the fact there is someone that you can talk to, someone that can acknowledge about God, that’s something good for inmates. The situation you are at might not be good, but he makes you realize that you are good spiritually and physically, you are in a good spot.

GONZALEZ: Along with larger worship services, the chaplains spend much of their time holding private one-on-one sessions with prisoners who want to talk to them. Episcopal chaplain Greta Ronnigen says she’s not interested in why the men she ministers to are here.

GONZALEZ: You don’t care what the guys are in here for?

CHAPLAIN GRETA RONNIGEN: No.

GONZALEZ: Why? That seems counter-intuitive.

RONNIGEN: Because I am here for their spiritual support. I am not a lawyer. I am not social services. I’m about where they are with God. I am here to talk to them as they turn, turn away from the dark that has been their past, and they are looking, they are seeking.

GONZALEZ: Some of the prisoners at the center of complex cases, such as murder or gang-related crimes, can be held at Twin Towers for years before they’re convicted and sentenced to state prison. Except in extraordinary circumstances, say when an inmate might be threatening to murder someone, the jailhouse clergy keep confidential what they hear from prisoners, as Chaplain Gibbs explained in a conversation back at the Los Angeles Episcopal diocese.

GONZALEZ: If an inmate says something in a confession and admits to something horrible you don’t have to report it, right?

GIBBS: It’s protected.

GONZALEZ: It’s protected.

GIBBS: Yeah, it’s protected. The nature of confession is that it is a sealed sacrament, and that’s important for the men. Once the priest puts on that stole and enters into the sacrament of the church, it is a completely sealed and confidential conversation, just like it would be with somebody confessing in their church.

GONZALEZ: The presence of the chaplains at county lockups also helps ease tensions and assuage anger, and the sheriff’s deputies welcome that. However, at Twin Towers security and punishment always come before worship, and that’s especially true in the jail’s highest security units or pods.

GIBBS: In this particular unit they are complicated cases. I would say a very good majority of the men are in here for homicide, and there’s a lot of gang-related crimes in this pod.

GONZALEZ: Here, services are often conducted through steel doors and plexiglass, and services, as in the day we were shooting, are often cut short by lockdowns.

GIBBS (speaking to Chaplain Ronnigen): Greta, full lockdown. We gotta go.

RONNIGEN: Sorry, guys. Peace.

GIBBS: Yeah, the jail just went on full lockdown, so we never really know what that is about, just that a full lockdown means that there is no movement whatsoever, so we want to wrap up rather quickly. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get out of the jail.

GONZALEZ: Although he doesn’t get into the details, Chaplain Gibbs knew about confinement long before he arrived at Twin Towers six years ago.

(speaking to Chaplain Gibbs): You were in jail yourself?

GIBBS: I was, yeah. I have lived this despairing life to a great degree, absolutely. My personal response to the call to follow Christ has led me back to the streets where I once was homeless. It’s led me back to the drug-addicted and alcoholic, as I once suffered. It’s led me back to the jails, where I once was a prisoner.

GONZALEZ: I’m sure, Chaplain, when the men at Twin Towers hear about your past, and I’m sure you share some of your past with them, it gives you a particular credibility.

GIBBS: I think it does. I think it changes the conversation to a degree and kind of alerts people that I am not just some do-gooder Christian guy coming in to tell you that Jesus loves you.

GONZALEZ: That’s certainly the case for prisoner David Yi.

DAVID YI: He does give us hope. That he was once an inmate also and now this is where he’s at, helping other people find themselves—it’s just a lot of hope.

GONZALEZ: He’s a good model to follow?

YI: Exactly. Someone you can lean on.

GONZALEZ: One of the Twin Towers prisoners Chaplain Gibbs has gotten to know the best in recent months is also the most unusual. He’s William Manson, a scholarly 80-year-old physician recently convicted of killing his ex-wife. Already in the hospital ward, Manson knows he’ll likely die behind prison walls.

WILLIAM MANSON: I think that the sentence was just under the circumstances. I did the crime. Now I’m paying the price.

GONZALEZ: And spiritually are you armed for this, for this life that you have ahead of you, being a man of faith?

MANSON: I don’t know. I think so.

GIBBS (speaking to William Manson): God bless you.

MANSON: Thank you very much.

GIBBS: Would you like to pray?

MANSON: Yes.

GIBBS: As chaplains we absorb people’s sadness, their brokenness, their wounding, their depth of spiritual despair, and we are very aware of that as chaplains. I think in many ways we hold for these inmates often what they cannot hold for themselves.

(anointing and blessing prisoners): May your wounds be healed.

GONZALEZ: For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Saul Gonzalez in Los Angeles.

Originally broadcast January 30, 2009

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: This past week (November 9) the Supreme Court heard arguments about whether it’s constitutional to sentence juveniles who commit crimes other than murder to life in prison without parole. Tim O’Brien reports.

TIM O’BRIEN, correspondent: Twenty-three-year-old Kenneth Young had just turned 15 when he committed a string of hotel robberies in the Tampa area, acting at the direction of 25-year-old Jacques Bethea, a neighborhood drug dealer with a long arrest record.  Bethea would hold the gun. Young would take the money.

KENNETH YOUNG: The only thing he told me to do was get the money and the tapes, and that was it.

O’BRIEN:  What tapes?

YOUNG:  Like video tapes from the video cameras.

O’BRIEN: The security camera?

YOUNG: Yes, sir.

O’BRIEN:  And you did that?

YOUNG:  Yes, sir.

O’BRIEN: Young says he had little choice. His mother was addicted to crack cocaine and had stolen drugs from Bethea. He believed her life was in danger.

YOUNG: He threatened to hurt my Momma.

O’BRIEN: What did he say he’d do?

YOUNG: Kill her.

O’BRIEN: If you didn’t go along.

YOUNG: Yes, sir.

O’BRIEN: Young’s mother blames herself for her son’s problems.

STEPHANIE YOUNG:  Yes, I do, I do, because if it wasn’t for the drugs, I mean …

O’BRIEN: But that didn’t keep Kenneth from being sentenced to life in prison with no parole.

JUDGE J. ROGERS PADGETT: What we see is what we get in the way of a defendant. We get a person who shows no remorse. We get a person who is smiling in court, thinks it’s funny. We have a person who, while he is under consideration for a life sentence, is flipping signals to people in the gallery.

Judge J. Rogers Padgett

O’BRIEN: He’s only 15, barely.

PADGETT: We have a person who gives no appearance of deserving any slack whatsoever and sentence him, so we give him a life sentence.

O’BRIEN: Florida, like many states, allows prosecutors to charge juveniles as adults for serious crimes, and the state legislature did away with all parole in 1995. As a result, there are now 77 inmates in the state serving life without parole for non-homicides committed when they were under 18, more than in all other states combined. Paolo Annino runs the Children in Prison Project at Florida State University:

PAOLO ANNINO: This is no different from slavery or other major moral issues. Placing children in adult prisons for life is a death sentence for children. Do we want to do that as a society? Do we want to ignore our Western traditions?

O’BRIEN: This week (November 9) the U.S. Supreme Court took up that question in two separate cases involving Terrence Graham, who at age 17 committed armed burglaries while on parole for a previous armed robbery, and Joe Sullivan, who was convicted of raping and robbing a 72-year-old woman when he was only 13.

BRYAN STEVENSON: We don’t think there’s any dispute that sentencing a 13-year-old to life in prison without parole is unusual. It’s happened only twice for non-homicides. We also think that to say to any child of 13 that you’re only fit to die in prison is cruel.

O’BRIEN: But Stevenson ran into some skeptical justices, including Antonin Scalia: “I don’t see why it is any crueler to an adolescent that it is to an adult… Where do you draw the line?” Justice Sam Alito: “What about …brutal rapes, assaults that render the victim paraplegic but not dead …the person shows no remorse… the worst case you could possibly imagine? That person must at some point be made eligible for parole? “You are correct, your honor,” answered Brian Gowdy, the attorney for Terrence Graham.

Brian Gowdy

BRIAN GOWDY: If the court rules in Terrence’s favor, about one hundred persons who committed crimes as adolescents will benefit by getting a chance to show some day that they have changed, and that’s all we’re asking for. Not for immediate release, but a chance to show that the kid has changed.

O’BRIEN: In court, Gowdy pointed to a landmark Supreme Court ruling four years ago in which the justices rejected the death penalty for juvenile offenders, relying heavily on evidence showing that juveniles use a different part of the brain in the decision-making process, making them more likely to act irrationally, less likely to appreciate the consequences of what they do. Several justices observed that that was a death penalty case, and death is different.

GOWDY: Death is different, but not in any critical respects when you’re talking about an adolescent. Both sentences condemn the adolescent to die in prison, both give up on the kid, both determine that the adolescent can’t be changed,  and both say that, based on an adolescent mistake, you can never live in civil society.

O’BRIEN: The attorney for Florida said the state’s sentencing practices were aimed at addressing a serious crime problem and that such policy decisions should not be second-guessed by federal judges.

SCOTT MAKAR (Florida Solicitor General): That’s a quintessential states’ judgment, and 21 states have said no to parole and our position is that the court shouldn’t impose something on the states that the states themselves have rejected.

O’BRIEN: Chief Justice John Roberts proposed a compromise requiring judges and juries to consider a defendant’s youth, but allowing life without parole in extreme cases. Defense lawyers dismissed the idea as too little.

STEVENSON: Because poor kids and minority kids and disadvantaged kids are always the ones who end up with these harsh sentence.

O’BRIEN: Conservatives on the court dismissed it as too much. Meanwhile, back in Florida, Kenneth Young and more than a hundred other prison inmates nationwide serving life without parole for crimes they committed as children got some support from what might seem to be an unlikely source. The judge who sentenced Young, J. Rogers Padgett, has come out against laws that deny parole to juveniles in non-homicide cases.

PADGETT: If I went and talked to Kenneth, I might have sympathy, too, because I firmly believe the Department of Corrections ought to be given the latitude to determine when these people are ready to go. What do I know? At the time of sentencing I’m doing a snapshot, so what do I know?

O’BRIEN: The justices appeared sharply divided, making any decision unlikely before the end of the term next June. For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Tim O’Brien in Washington.

ABERNETHY: Among those who have filed briefs with the court are 20 religious groups that argued that the values of mercy, forgiveness, and compassion are central to their faiths. They said judges have a responsibility to consider those values, along with the possibility of rehabilitation, especially for juveniles. They urged what they call “restorative justice.”

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: We have a powerful story today about punishment for juveniles who commit crimes. The Supreme Court has thrown out the death penalty for such young people, but in 44 states they can still be sentenced to life in prison without parole.  Is that just for children – even for the worst crimes? Tim O’Brien reports from Tampa, Florida.

TIM O’BRIEN: Twenty-three-year-old Kenneth Young is serving life in prison with no possibility of parole for a series of hotel robberies in and around Tampa, Florida. It was June of 2000. Young had just turned 15 and was acting at the direction of 25-year-old Jacques Bethea, a neighborhood drug dealer with a long arrest record. Bethea would hold the gun. Young would take the money:

KENNETH YOUNG: The only thing he told me to do was get the money and the tapes, and that was it.

O’BRIEN: What tapes?

Mr. YOUNG: Like video tapes from the video cameras.

O’BRIEN: The security cameras?

Mr. YOUNG: Yes, sir.

O’BRIEN: And you did that?

Mr. YOUNG: Yes, sir.

O’BRIEN: Young says he had little choice. His mother was addicted to crack cocaine and had stolen drugs from Bethea. He believed her life was in danger.

Mr. YOUNG: He threatened to hurt my Momma.

O’BRIEN: What did he say he’d do?

Mr. YOUNG: Kill her.

Mr. YOUNG: Yes, sir.

O’BRIEN: Young’s mother, who says she’s been off drugs for more than three years, blames herself for the fix her son is in.

O’BRIEN: If you didn’t go along?

STEPHANIE YOUNG: Yes, I do, I do, because if it wasn’t for the drugs, me being on drugs, then my son wouldn’t be where he’s at today.

O’BRIEN: Young is being held at a maximum security prison in central Florida. Under Florida law, juveniles charged with serious crimes are tried as adults, and serious crimes — like armed robbery — can bring life in prison. And in the courtroom of Judge J. Rogers Padgett, being a child didn’t seem to help. It can even hurt the child who behaves like one, as Kenneth Young did.

Judge J. ROGERS PADGETT (Hillsborough County, Florida Circuit Court): So what we see is what we get in the way of a defendant. We get a person who shows no remorse. We get a person who is smiling in court, thinks it’s funny. We have a person who, while he is under consideration for a life sentence, is flipping signals to people in the gallery.

O’BRIEN: He’s only 15, barely.

Judge PADGETT: We have a person who gives no appearance of deserving any slack whatsoever and sentence him. So we give him a life sentence.

O’BRIEN: Enter law professor Paolo Annino, who runs the Children in Prison Project at Florida State University. Annino has been trying for years to get the Florida legislature to allow parole consideration for all juvenile offenders in the state to give them a second chance, his arguments as much moral as they are legal.

(to Prof. Paolo Annino): Is it your position that no juvenile should be sentenced to life without parole?

Professor PAOLO ANNINO (Florida State University): Oh, absolutely, and I think we’re immoral, ultimately, as a nation. This is no different from slavery or other major moral issues. Placing children in adult prisons for life is a death sentence for children. Do we want to do that as a society? Do we want to ignore our Western traditions? I mean, we do have Western traditions, and one part of our Western traditions is called redemption, and for many people in our culture redemption is an important value.

Judge PADGETT: There are some crimes that these people have committed that simply have no redemption. The victim and the public in general who know about the crime are looking for retribution.

O’BRIEN: It’s all about retribution.

Judge PADGETT: Retribution, right.

O’BRIEN: According to Human Rights Watch, the United States is the only country in the world that regularly sentences juvenile offenders to life in prison without parole. There are now more than 2,500. Pennsylvania has the most with 444. All but these six states allow life without parole for those under 18 at the time of their crimes.

Most of the crimes that bring life in prison without parole are far worse than Kenneth Young’s armed robberies. Most involved murder, often the murder of other children — crimes that shock the conscience and break the heart.

DAWN ROMIG (testifying): Good morning. My name is Dawn Romig.

O’BRIEN: In Pennsylvania, a Senate committee held hearings last October to consider doing away with life sentences for juvenile offenders. Lawmakers got an earful from opponents like Dawn Romig, whose 12-year-old daughter had been murdered by 17-year-old Brian Bahr.

Ms. ROMIG (testifying): We learned that Brian had made a list. It was called 23 things to do to a girl in the woods: “Beat her, check; rape her, check; kill her, check.” Everything on that list was carried out. It was an adult act he planned and executed. Why should these juveniles not get life in prison? Age cannot excuse what they have done.

JODI DOTTS (testifying): I never got to say goodbye to Kimmie. I never got to see her in a casket. I now talk to her at her grave still, 10 years later, on Mother’s Day. I’d also like to add, as I was sitting here listening to people saying they need second chances, my daughter didn’t have a second chance. She wasn’t given that choice whether to live or to die and I’m here to fight to make sure that these juveniles do not get released. Thank you.

O’BRIEN: What do you say to the parents of a child — whose child is murdered?

Prof. ANNINO: Well, it’s tragic and it’s very difficult, and I turn to a group that I’m associated with, and it’s called Mothers Against Murderers Association — and their children have been killed

O’BRIEN: MAMA Inc., a remarkable support group in West Palm Beach. Seventy-three women, all of whom have lost a child to murder, meet at this storefront office every other Thursday. The walls are lined with the photographs—the mother with her lost child.

On this day, Paula Bowe will be joining MAMA’s poignant photo gallery. Her daughter was shot to death by an ex-boyfriend—

PAULA BOWE: And he shot her. He shot her twice at point blank—once in the face, once in the neck.

O’BRIEN: What makes this association so remarkable is that, despite their grief, members do not seek retribution. Instead, they speak out against it.

ANGELA WILLIAMS (Founder, MAMA Inc): That’s one thing I tell my moms all the time: the only way they’re going to move on, they’re going to have to learn to forgive, you know, and if they don’t learn to forgive, then they’ll never be able to move on to the next step.

O’BRIEN: And Angela Williams should know.

Ms. WILLIAMS: I lost seven. I lost five nephews and two nieces in my family, and that motivates me to keep going to help others. Gun violence — all killed by guns.

O’BRIEN: MAMA is supporting Kenneth Young’s petition for clemency on the premise that any child should be given a second chance, even for murder.

O’BRIEN: Sylvia Manning is a preacher whose son was shot to death. She believes there’s hope for his killer, who has yet to be apprehended.

Reverend SYLVIA MANNING: I feel as though whoever did this to my son, they can be redeemed. I mean, if they know Jesus they can be redeemed.

O’BRIEN: It’s a religious issue to you?

Rev. MANNING: Not really religious. It’s what my heart says.

O’BRIEN: Linda Battle is a Palm Beach County deputy sheriff whose son Eric was run down and killed by a drug dealer.

LINDA BATTLE (Deputy Sheriff, Palm Beach County, FL): I worked in the jails, and I see the juveniles come in there for major crimes, and they’re just babies, and I don’t know what got them to that point.

O’BRIEN: What got them to that point? The U.S. Supreme Court, in rejecting the death penalty for juvenile offenders four years ago, relied in part on the growing body of psychiatric evidence that shows why children often fail to act as responsibly as adults,

Dr. RICHARD RATNER (American Psychiatric Association): In a nutshell, it is that the brain has not really matured. You do not really have an adult brain until you are in your early 20s.

O’BRIEN: You have actual, empirical evidence of that?

Dr. RATNER: We do.

O’BRIEN: Ratner says that magnetic resonance imaging — MRIs like this one — show that juveniles use a different part of the brain in the decision-making process than adults, making them more likely to act irrationally, less likely to appreciate the consequences of what they do.

Roughly 25 percent of the juvenile offenders serving life with no parole for murder never murdered anyone; rather, they were following the lead of an older adult. But under what’s known in the law as the felony murder rule, they are just as guilty as those who pull the trigger and often sentenced just as harshly.

Prof. ANNINO: They follow these older adults, and then the adults commit a murder. So the kid never has the gun in his hand. The kid never touches the gun. Many times—

O’BRIEN: But he’s still charged with murder?

Prof. ANNINO: He is charged with murder and gets the exact same sentence.

O’BRIEN: An accessory is as guilty as the principal?

Prof. ANNINO: In the state of Florida it is exactly the same, and that’s the felony murder rule, and we have it not just in Florida, but around the country, and the felony murder rules denies the individuality of the child. It ignores the fact that you have a child here, and you’re treating the child just like an adult.

O’BRIEN: Among those who have problems with that, we were surprised to find the judge who had sentenced Kenneth Young to four consecutive life terms. Judge J. Rogers Padgett said judges have no way of knowing what might become of the children who appear before them and, at least where the victim doesn’t die, their fate should be left to the Department of Corrections.

Judge PADGETT: If I went and talked to Kenneth, I might have sympathy, too, because I firmly believe the Department of Corrections ought to be given the latitude to determine when these people are ready to go. What do I know? At the time of sentencing, I’m doing a snapshot. So what do I know?

O’BRIEN: But in Florida, as in most states, it’s too late to turn back the clock. Even the sentencing judge cannot reopen this case decided more than seven years ago.

Ms. YOUNG: It’s hard. It’s so hard — the sleepless nights that I have had. And every time I go to see my child, and I have to leave that prison without my baby, it just takes something out of me. It hurts. It hurts so bad.

O’BRIEN: Unless Florida changes its law, or the governor commutes the sentence, Kenneth Young will die in prison. He will never get out.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Tim O’Brien in Tampa, Florida.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: The Supreme Court ruled this week that all 270 foreign terrorism suspects at Guantanamo have the right under the U.S. Constitution to challenge their detention in federal court. Another High Court decision excepted soon could expand the death penalty. Right now, 36 states permit capital punishment for murder. Should that penalty be extended to those who rape children? Criminologists say people are punished to prevent them from committing another crime, as a deterrent to others, to rehabilitate them and as retribution — revenge. Does revenge for child rape justify execution? Tim O’Brien begins his report from New Orleans, and his story contains some material that may be disturbing.

VOICE OF FEMALE ANCHOR (ABC 26 News 1998 file footage): Today, safety shattered in a quiet neighborhood. A child raped. The teens who did it: on the run.

VOICE OF MALE ANCHOR (ABC 26 News 1998 file footage): An eight-year-old Girl Scout raped in her Harvey neighborhood is recovering from surgery tonight.

VOICE OF MALE REPORTER (ABC 26 News 1998 file footage): People who live in the Woodmere subdivision are hoping for peace of mind. The thought — a rapist is on the loose…

TIM O’BRIEN: The brutal rape of a small child galvanized this normally tranquil community just outside New Orleans and horrified the neighbors.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: There’s got to be some maniac running around out here.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: I wouldn’t have never thought that someone would live on my street and do something like this.

Sheriff HARRY LEE (Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, during 1998 press conference): I’m in my 18th year as sheriff and I’ve seen a lot of bad things happen, and this is probably the worst.

O’BRIEN: So bad that Jefferson Parish Sheriff Harry Lee put up $5,000 of his own money for information leading to an arrest. In addition to the psychological trauma, the eight-year old girl also suffered severe physical injuries. The city of New Orleans rallied to help, including the New Orleans Saints football team, which launched a fundraising drive to help defray the child’s mounting medical expenses.

KAREN TOWNSEND (Reporter, ABC News 26, from 1998 file footage): Sheriff Lee says the prime suspects in this case are two black teens.

O’BRIEN: The manhunt became so intense sheriff’s deputies began stopping all young black males in the neighborhood.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: They made me take my shirt off, and, you know, it’s cold out here, you know?

VOICE OF FEMALE REPORTER: What were they looking for?

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: Just tattoos, any little marks.

O’BRIEN: The victim had told police her attackers were two black teenagers. But the story fell apart, and suspicion began to shift to the child’s stepfather, Patrick Kennedy, who had called co-workers on the morning of the rape seeking advice on how to remove blood from a white carpet. It turned out Kennedy also had been accused, although never convicted, of sexually molesting four foster children in his care. They were removed. His eight-year-old stepdaughter eventually said that it was Kennedy — six-feet-four, 375 pounds — who had raped her and then told her to blame it on the teenagers.

CHILD VICTIM : First, he told me that he was going to make up a story and I better say it.

O’BRIEN: And, she said, it wasn’t the first time Kennedy had sexually molested her.

FEMALE INTERVIEWER: Did Patrick Kennedy do something to you just that one day, or did he did he do anything any other times?

Rep. Pete Schneider

CHILD VICTIM : He did more than once. I think five (holds up five fingers).

PROSECUTOR : More than once? You think five?

CHILD VICTIM : Um-hmmm.

PROSECUTOR : Okay. Do you remember how old you were the very first time he did something?

CHILD VICTIM : (shakes her head “no”)

O’BRIEN: Three years earlier the Louisiana legislature overwhelmingly passed a law authorizing the death penalty for anyone who rapes a child under the age of 12. The jury agreed unanimously: Patrick Kennedy deserved nothing less. The law was introduced by then state representative Pete Schneider

(to Rep. Pete Schneider): Is this the kind of guy you had in mind when you passed this law?

Representative PETE SCHNEIDER (Former Louisiana State Representative): Absolutely. Someone who would brutally rape a child — and rape is wrong no matter whom it is done to, but in a situation like this I believe the death penalty is the appropriate punishment for the crime.

O’BRIEN: Kennedy’s court appointed lawyers disagree and have taken their case to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing if the death penalty for rape isn’t cruel, it certainly is unusual, violating the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

BILLY SOTHERN (Capital Appeals Project): Mr. Kennedy is one of only two men on death row in the state of Louisiana for the crime of child rape. Indeed, Mr. Kennedy and this other individual are the only two men in the United States for the crime of child rape who’ve been sentenced to death.

O’BRIEN: The U.S. Supreme Court, more than 30-years ago, found the death penalty unconstitutional for rape — that death is disproportionate to the crime.

Billy Sothern

BARBARA WALTERS (Anchor, ABC Evening News, from 1977 file footage): Good evening. Our top stories: The Supreme Court says the crime of rape should not be punishable by death.

O’BRIEN: But that case involved a 16-year-old married woman. Louisiana contends the rape of a child is much worse and that the Court’s earlier opinion shouldn’t apply when the victim is so young.

Rep. SCHNEIDER: Twenty-nine percent of the rape cases in this country — and it’s probably underreported — are committed on 11-year-olds and younger. Twenty-nine percent! And they’re horrendous crimes. You steal their childhood. You steal their soul. You hurt the world when you do something like that to a child.

O’BRIEN: We may never know to what extent, if any, the death penalty actually deters, but there’s clearly another theory behind this Louisiana law. Call it revenge, or retribution, or a thirst for simple justice which, if left unfulfilled, may encourage others, loved ones, to go out and find it on their own. Sex offenders may be the least likely to be deterred, and their crimes are the most likely to bring retribution. Jeffrey Doucet: suspected of kidnapping and molesting an 11-year-old Baton Rouge boy. When sheriff’s deputies brought Doucet back to Louisiana, the boy’s father, Gary Plauche, was waiting at the Baton Rouge airport with a gun. Believing they could never get a conviction, prosecutors allowed Plauche to plead guilty to manslaughter with a suspended sentence. The state’s attorney general, Buddy Caldwell, says it’s the state that must exact the retribution, not loved ones, and that the Louisiana law makes it less likely they”ll try.

(to Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell): Even if it doesn’t deter others — that’s an open debate. Bu even if it doesn’t, you say the death penalty in cases like this is justified?

BUDDY CALDWELL (State Attorney General, Louisiana): I believe it absolutely is.

O’BRIEN: Retribution alone is enough?

Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell

Mr. CALDWELL : Retribution alone is enough.

O’BRIEN: Some of your opposition, including the Catholic Church, will quote the Bible and say “vengeance is mine, so sayeth the Lord.”

Mr. CALDWELL : Well, we see a lot of people that don’t have a clue. But I think most people understand, even liberals have children that if they’re raped and mutilated, like in a lot of these cases, they would be for the death penalty, whether they say so or not. It’s always the other guy.

O’BRIEN: It’s a retributive function of the law?

Mr. CALDWELL : I think so.

O’BRIEN: Ironically, a number of child advocacy groups are siding with the defendant in this case, telling the Supreme Court the death penalty for child molesters is counterproductive. Judy Benitez, who heads the Louisiana Foundation against Sexual Assault, says Louisiana’s law may discourage children from coming forward and give the molester an incentive to kill his victim.

JUDY BENITEZ: If they’re not facing any harsher punishment for killing the child and raping them, then they are for — and I say this sort of facetiously — for just raping them, you know, the state can’t kill them but once. So what are they going to do? And this way they don’t leave a living witness.

O’BRIEN: Patrick Kennedy’s lawyer says if retribution is the goal, life in prison is retribution enough.

Mr. SOTHERN: The alternative punishment here in Louisiana for the crime of child rape is life without the possibility of parole at Angola penitentiary. It’s “you die at Angola.” So it’s not like the alternative punishment for this is somehow lenient. The alternative punishment in this instance is extraordinarily harsh.

O’BRIEN: Both sides agree the law does make it easier for prosecutors to negotiate a plea agreement with the defendant for life in prison, sparing the child the trauma of having to testify at a trial. The question for the Supreme Court, however, is not whether this is a wise law or even a good law, or whether it even makes any sense at all, only whether it’s such a bad law as to violate the standards of decency of a civilized nation as embodied in the U.S. Bill of Rights.

For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, I’m Tim O’Brien in Washington.