AP wrote:
OKLAHOMA CITY - Oklahoma on Friday became the fifth state to allow the death penalty for repeat child molesters, although legal scholars questioned the constitutionality of the new state law.
Similar statutes already are in place in Florida, Louisiana and Montana, and South Carolina's governor signed a similar law on Thursday.
Oklahoma Gov. Brad Henry didn't discuss the measure Friday as he signed it into law.
The law makes the death penalty an option for anyone convicted of a second or subsequent conviction for rape, sodomy or lewd molestation involving a child under 14.
Defense attorneys and death penalty experts said the measure defies recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions that have scaled back the death penalty's application.
Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, said the sex offender bills are a reaction to public outcry over the frequency and seriousness of sex offenses, and the attention they receive in the media.
No one convicted of a sex offense has been executed since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment 30 years ago, though one inmate is on death row in Louisiana following his 2003 conviction for raping an 8-year-old girl.
This is not as simple an issue as it appears. As heinous a crime as child molesting is, there is a very good reason why the death penalty should not be invoked in these type of cases. If a child molester knows he could face death for an act he has just committed, then he has an incentive to murder his victim to remove the witness. This is exactly the same reason rapists stopped being executed as a general rule so many decades ago.
I am personally in favor of the death penalty for the appropriate crimes. It provides the ultimate deterence to to certain types of murder. To clarify, I am not trying to start yet another Death Penalty thread, we have had plenty of those, rather the Issue here is: if we do have a death penalty, should it apply to child molesters?