Death penalty for child abuse in Tennessee is a mistake
Expanding the range of defendants in capital crimes to include cases of nonfatal rape of children significantly increases the likelihood of a wrongful conviction.
District Attorney will not retry 2013 child rape case overturned by appeals court
William Arnold was found guilty in 2013 of aggravated sexual assault and three counts of rape of a child.
Nashville Tennessee
- Sarah McGee has served as a victim-witness coordinator for the Davidson County District Attorney’s Office, a probation officer, and an assistant public defender for juveniles and adults.
Against the advice of child protection organizations and experts, lawmakers recently passed a bill that would extend the death penalty to those who sexually abuse children.
As a mother of three young children, I understand the desire to punish people who commit these reprehensible crimes. However, as someone who has worked as a victim-witness coordinator for the Davidson County District Attorney’s Office, as a probation officer, and as an assistant public defender for juveniles and adults, I have learned that we should heed the expert advice of child welfare agencies and experts who care for these children every day in our state when they repeatedly state that this legislation will not make children safer, but will deter them from reporting the crime in the first place, or could even endanger their lives.
By killing the rapist, the child becomes an even greater victim
These experts said that 90% of these crimes are committed by family members or people they trust. This means that if a child reports the crime, not only could his grandfather or his uncle or his priest get in trouble, but he could also be executed.
Experts believe that this will lead to a dramatic under-reporting of this crime.
Another unintended consequence of this legislation is that it may even encourage perpetrators to kill their child victims to eliminate any witnesses, since the punishment is now the same whether they kill their victims or not.
The death penalty is inherently flawed
There are other reasons why we should be concerned.
The death penalty carries the risk of executing an innocent person. Since 1972, nearly 200 people have been acquitted of the death penalty due to wrongful conviction, including three from Tennessee. False accusations are particularly common in this type of crime.
There are at least 60 known cases nationwide of acquittals of innocent people accused of child abuse who were wrongfully convicted because they made false accusations and aggressively and suggestively questioned children believed to be victims.
Expanding the pool of potential capital crime defendants to include non-fatal child rape cases greatly increases the risk of miscarriages of justice. A Republican senator, concerned about this very scenario, attempted to amend the bill to ensure that there was other evidence to support the charge, including assault or physical evidence. That amendment was defeated.
Supreme Court denies death penalty for cases other than murder
The damage caused by false accusations and imprisonments, not to mention executions, can never be undone. William Arnold Jr. was falsely accused of a crime that could have been punishable by death under this law. He spent seven years in prison for a crime he did not commit and could have been executed. He is just one example from our state. The U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled that the death penalty is unconstitutional for crimes other than homicide.
The amount of resources our state would have to expend to defend this new law, as well as the trauma it would inflict on child victims during the decades-long appeals process, cannot be overstated.
When another senator asked to amend the bill to ensure that the state covers the cost of counseling and other trauma services if we subject children and their families to decades of litigation, her amendment was rejected.
Expanding the death penalty to child rape creates more problems than it solves. Our resources would be better spent on preventing child abuse to repair the harm and promote healing for victims and their families. When it comes to keeping our children safe, we should follow the experts.
Sarah McGee has served as a victim-witness coordinator for the Davidson County District Attorney’s Office, a probation officer and assistant public defender for juveniles and adults, and is currently the coordinator of a nonprofit organization working for death penalty reform in Tennessee.
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