Just when you thought the Left-leaning block of the U.S. Supreme Court could not get any more flawed in their decision-making process... The New York Times is reporting [4] that part of their major argument in their majority opinion against the Louisiana death sentence was based on a factual error:
When the Supreme Court ruled last week that the death penalty for raping a child was unconstitutional, the majority noted that a child rapist could face the ultimate penalty in only six states - not in any of the 30 other states that have the death penalty, and not under the jurisdiction of the federal government either.
This inventory of jurisdictions was a central part of the court's analysis, the foundation for Justice Anthony M. Kennedy's conclusion in his majority opinion that capital punishment for child rape was contrary to the "evolving standards of decency" by which the court judges how the death penalty is applied.
It turns out that Justice Kennedy's confident assertion about the absence of federal law was wrong.
A military law blog pointed out over the weekend that Congress, in fact, revised the sex crimes section of the Uniform Code of Military Justice in 2006 to add child rape to the military death penalty. The revisions were in the National Defense Authorization Act that year. President Bush signed that bill into law and then, last September, carried the changes forward by issuing Executive Order 13447, which put the provisions into the 2008 edition of the Manual for Courts-Martial.
It's hard enough when you try to engage in the political battle against the Left on an even playing field. But, now we see that those on the left, even as high as our Supreme Court justices, don't mind using erroneous data to further their agenda.
As far as this decision's outcome... As they say, "Garbage in, Garbage out."
