Idaho governor signs into law child sex abuse death penalty bill

Widely supported in the Idaho Legislature, the bill is likely to face a constitutional challenge, lawmakers acknowledge. But they are hopeful law will prevail.

Idaho Gov. Brad Little signed into law a bill to make people who sexually abuse young children in Idaho eligible for the death penalty. 

House Bill 380 will allow the death penalty in a new criminal charge the bill creates: aggravated lewd conduct with children age 12 and younger.

The bill also would add mandatory minimum prison sentences for cases of aggravated lewd conduct with minors that don’t meet the bill’s proposed criteria for death penalty eligibility. The new crime would only apply to abuse of children age 16 and below. 

Little signed the bill Wednesday morning, according to the governor’s office legislation tracker. He told the Idaho Capital Sun in a written statement that he signed the bill “because heinous sex crimes against children destroy lives, and the perpetrators deserve the ultimate punishment.”

The Idaho Legislature widely passed the bill, with only five votes against in the Senate and none in the House.

The bill was cosponsored by Rep. Bruce Skaug, R-Nampa, House Assistant Majority Leader Josh Tanner, R-Eagle, and over a half dozen other Idaho lawmakers.  

Skaug has told lawmakers Idaho has some of the nation’s most lenient child rape laws. 

The bill takes effect July 1. 

U.S. Supreme Court already struck down death penalties for child rape. Idaho lawmakers expect a legal challenge.

The U.S. Supreme Court in 2008 blocked death penalties for child rape in Kennedy v. Louisiana. 

Florida passed a child rape death penalty law two years ago. Last year, Tennessee passed a child rape death penalty law. 

Bracing for a legal challenge to the bill, Skaug told lawmakers he expects the U.S. Supreme Court would rule differently. 

“You can say, ‘Well, that’s unconstitutional, Bruce. Why would you bring that?’ Well, it was — according to a 5-4 decision in 2008. I don’t think that would be the case today,” Skaug, an attorney, told lawmakers in a House committee hearing. “That’s my professional opinion. That’s the opinion of many other attorneys.”

The American Civil Liberties Union of Idaho, or ACLU, strongly opposes the bill. 

“Choosing to make this bill law not only demonstrates an arrogant disregard for legal precedent from our country’s highest court, but it would also have devastating consequences that victims, their families, and wrongfully convicted people would be unable to reverse,” ACLU of Idaho spokesperson Rebecca De León told the Idaho Capital Sun in a prepared statement. “This law will vastly increase death penalty prosecutions in Idaho, burdening an already flawed criminal legal system prone to wrongful convictions, inadequate public defense, and racial disparities.”

Skaug has said the death penalty would be rarely sought under his bill. Nine people are on death row in Idaho, according to the Idaho Department of Correction.

Idaho law only allows the death penalty in first-degree murder cases with aggravating circumstances. 

Little also recently signed a bill into law that will make the Gem State the only state to use firing squads as its main execution method. Skaug also cosponsored that bill.

How the bill works: Three aggravating factors required to seek death penalty

This year’s child sex abuse death penalty bill is Skaug and Tanner’s second attempt at such a bill. Last year, another bill they brought widely passed the House but never received a Senate committee hearing. 

Their new bill that passed will establish the new crime, and mandatory minimums criminal sentences. For instance, the bill’s proposed mandatory minimum sentence for aggravated lewd conduct with minors under age 16 would carry at least 25 years in prison. 

Under the bill, lewd conduct with a minor would include but is not limited to “genital-genital contact, oral-genital contact, anal-genital contact, oral-anal contact, manual-anal contact, or manual-genital contact” when such acts are meant to arouse, appeal to or gratify “lust or passions or sexual desires.”

The bill outlines more than a dozen aggravating factors under which prosecutors can seek the death penalty. Only three are required to seek the death penalty, which would only be available in cases of aggravated lewd conduct against minors age 12 and younger.

Public testimony has been largely supportive of the bill. 

But in a Senate committee hearing on the bill, David Martinez of the Idaho Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers testified against the bill, saying at least three of the bill’s aggravating factors were already present in almost every lewd conduct case he has handled or supervised.

He also argued the bill doesn’t focus on “the worst of the worst,” could potentially expose victims of decades of reliving trauma, and fails to account for Idaho’s shortage of qualified death penalty defense attorneys.

Holly Rebholtz, representing the Idaho Prosecuting Attorneys Association, said she disagreed, saying the new aggravated lewd conduct crime wouldn’t be charged very often.

“I don’t think these crimes are going to come into play very often. But when they do, they are the most serious crimes we see. And again, the prosecutors believe that the most serious crimes against children deserve a serious punishment,” she testified.

Source: idahocapitalsun.com, Kyle Pfannensteil, March 27, 2025

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

— Oscar Wilde