Child Rapist's Sentence to Test Supreme Court

Louisiana's Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that a man may be executed for raping an 8-year-old girl, and lawyers say his case may become the test for whether the nation's highest court upholds the death penalty for someone who rapes a child.

Both sides say the sentence for Patrick Kennedy, 42, could expand a 1977 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that held the death penalty for rape violated the Eighth Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment. The high court said then that its ruling applied only to adult victims.

Louisiana law allows the death penalty for the aggravated rape of someone less than 12 years old. "He's the only person in the United States on death row for non-homicide rape," Picou said.

Kennedy was convicted in 2003 of raping a relative as she sorted Girl Scout cookies in the garage of her home in suburban New Orleans. He bragged to one man that the girl "became a lady today," deputies said.

The governors of South Carolina and Oklahoma signed laws last year allowing the death penalty for people who repeatedly rape children.

A bill that would allow the death penalty for a second offense of child rape is awaiting the governor's decision in Texas. Georgia law allows death as a penalty for rape. Dieter said Florida and Montana also have such laws, but authorities have said the penalty would be invoked only for rape of a child