Alabama approved legislation Thursday that would allow prosecutors to seek the death penalty for rape and sexual torture of a child under 12, a punishment outlawed by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2008. The state Senate passed the measure 33-1, sending it to Gov. Kay Ivey, who said she will sign the bill into law.
Supporters framed the vote as a step toward protecting children, even as they acknowledged it conflicts with existing constitutional limits on capital punishment for child-rape convictions. The bill makes the relevant conduct eligible for a death sentence by expanding the narrow list of crimes that can trigger capital punishment.
Republican Rep. Matt Simpson, a former prosecutor sponsoring the legislation, said the strategy is to press the Supreme Court to revisit the constitutionality issue. Simpson said it would require a test case reaching the high court and he hopes it can happen if enough states pass similar laws.
Simpson argued that the conduct in question warrants the most severe punishment. “This is the worst of the worst crime. It deserves the worst of the worst punishments,” Simpson said.
The 2008 Supreme Court ruling that supporters are trying to challenge held that death sentences for child-rape convictions would violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. In the majority opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that the prospect of a death sentence might discourage reporting by victims and could remove “a strong incentive for the rapist not to kill the victim.”
In Alabama’s debate over the bill, some lawmakers stressed that capital punishment for child rape is unconstitutional and warned that taxpayers would have to pay for any court challenges that follow. Still, Republican Sen. April Weaver drew comparisons to abortion bans that were considered unconstitutional until the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 and allowed states to prohibit abortion.
Weaver also referenced a headline-making criminal case that prompted renewed attention to child sex abuse allegations in Alabama. Prosecutors said at least 10 children, some as young as 3, were subjected to rape and torture in an underground bunker in Bibb County, according to the AP report. Weaver said, “I believe there’s a special place in hell for people who do this to our children, and today, we’re one step closer to having a special place for them in Alabama, and that’s on death row.”
Outside Alabama, the broader push for death-penalty eligibility in child-rape cases has been spreading among Republican-led states. The Death Penalty Information Center said five states—Florida, Tennessee, Idaho, Arkansas and Oklahoma—passed similar bills in the last three years, and at least five more have proposed bills.
The AP report also noted that in November, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier said he intended to seek a death sentence for a man indicted on charges that include multiple counts of capital sexual battery on a child under 12.
Even with the measure’s bipartisan appearance in the AP report’s description of support, opposition groups argue that the legal change could put children at greater risk. Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said there are concerns these laws could cause children harm rather than protect them, and pointed to the Supreme Court’s reasoning from 2008.
Maher said, “The court recognized that these statutes do more harm to children than help them. They actually place them in grave danger of being killed,” Maher said.
As Alabama heads toward the next stage, Gov. Ivey signaled she intends to move quickly once the bill reaches her desk. She said she will sign it because, “we have to do everything we can to protect Alabama’s children.”