Death penalty for child rapists does more harm than good. Tennessee erred on new law

If you expand the pool of potential capital defendants to include non-lethal child rape, you substantially increase the potential for wrongful convictions.

Sarah McGee has served as a victim-witness coordinator for the Davidson County District Attorney’s Office, a probation officer, an assistant public defender for youth and adults.

Against the advice of child service providers and experts, the legislature recently passed a bill to expand the death penalty to individuals who sexually abuse children.

As the mother of 3 young children, I understand the desire to punish people who commit these reprehensible crimes. However, as someone who has served as a victim-witness coordinator for the Davidson County District Attorney’s Office, a probation officer, and as an assistant public defender for youth and adults, I have learned that when child service providers and experts, the people caring for these children every day all over our state, have repeatedly stated that this legislation will not make children safer but will instead keep children from reporting the crime at all, or could even endanger their lives, we should heed their expert advice.

Killing the rapist further victimizes the child

These experts testified that 90% of these crimes are committed by members of the child’s own family or those in their circle of trust. This means that if a child comes forward to report the crime, not only could her grandpa or his uncle or her pastor get in trouble, he could now be executed.

Experts have suggested this will lead to a dramatic under-reporting of this crime.

Another unintended consequence of this legislation is that it may actually encourage abusers to kill their child victims in order to eliminate any witnesses, because the punishment is now the same whether or not they kill their victims.

The death penalty is inherently flawed

There are other reasons we should be concerned as well.

The death penalty carries with it the inherent risk of executing an innocent person. Since 1972, nearly 200 people have been exonerated from death rows because of wrongful conviction, including three from Tennessee. This type of crime has a particularly high rate of false accusations.

There are at least 60 known exonerations nationally of innocent people accused of child abuse. They were wrongfully convicted due to false allegations and aggressive and suggestive interviews of children who were thought to be victims.

If you expand the pool of potential capital defendants to include non-lethal child rape, you substantially increase the potential for wrongful convictions. A Republican Senator concerned about this very scenario attempted to amend this bill to ensure that there was other evidence to corroborate this charge including bodily injury or physical evidence. That amendment was defeated.

The damage of false accusations and imprisonment, let alone execution, can never be undone. William Arnold Jr. was falsely accused of one of the crimes that would be eligible for the death penalty under this bill. He spent seven years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit and could have been executed. He is just one example from our state.The U.S. Supreme Court has already determined that it is unconstitutional to use the death penalty for non-homicide crimes.

The amount of resources our state would spend to defend this new law, as well as the trauma it would inflict upon child victims during the decades long appeals process cannot be overstated.

When another senator asked to amend the bill to ensure that the state would pay for counseling and other trauma support if we are going to require children and their families to endure decades of litigation, her amendment was rejected.

Expanding the death penalty to child rape creates more problems than it solves. Our resources are better spent on child abuse prevention and seeking to repair the harm and foster healing for victims and their families. Let’s follow the experts when it comes to the safety of our children.

Source: The Tennessean, Guest Columnist; Sarah McGee, July 7, 2024. Sarah McGee has served as a victim-witness coordinator for the Davidson County District Attorney’s Office, a probation officer, an assistant public defender for youth and adults, and she currently serves as the coordinator for a non-profit that seeks to reform Tennessee’s death penalty.

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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde

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