Another Bush Administration Goof Up
Oh man, the wheels have really come off. This one may have cost them a Supreme Court decision -- not that I'm remotely sorry about the omission nor the decision:
In a highly unusual admission of error, the Justice Department acknowledged on Wednesday that government lawyers should have known that Congress had recently made the rape of a child a capital offense in the military and should have informed the Supreme Court of that fact while the justices were considering whether death was a constitutional punishment for the crime...
...In that case, decided June 25 by a vote of 5 to 4, the court ruled that the Constitution prohibits the death penalty for the rape of a child. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy's majority opinion was based in part on the conclusion that because child rape was a capital offense in only six states, and not under federal law, the death penalty for the crime did not meet the “evolving standards of decency” by which the court judges capital punishment.
They just simply forgot to include what was perhaps their most compelling argument. Oops!
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