The Supreme Court agreed Friday to decide whether a state can execute someone convicted of raping a child, one of the few remaining crimes that does not require the death of the victim to result in capital punishment.

Patrick Kennedy, 43, was sentenced to death for the rape of his 8- year-old stepdaughter in Louisiana.

He is the only person on death row in the United States for a rape that was not also accompanied by a killing.

The Supreme Court banned executions for rape in 1977 in a case in which the victim was an adult woman.

Kennedy’s lawyers say the death penalty for child rape violates the Eighth Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment.

It’s ridiculous not to apply the death penalty to child rapists. They may not have physically killed a child, but emotionally and psychologically they have.

Child rapists are usually impossible to rehabilitate and almost always re-offend if they are released.

Every week in this country we hear about some pedophile who gets paroled and then rapes another child. Unfortunately, the child usually ends up dying a horrifying death sooner or later.

For a prison system that is dangerously overcrowded already, we simply don’t have the space to warehouse every predator.

We can’t let them out and we don’t have the room or money to house them, so the death penalty makes for a great alternative. An alternative that they indeed deserve many times over.

Any person who would rape their 8-year old daughter simply does not deserve to live. There is no room in this world for people who commit such heinous acts.

-Chris Jones