Jindal may challenge SC ruling on child-rape death penalty

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, is hogging US media headlines as he mulls challenging a recent controversial Supreme Court ruling forbidding the death penalty in child-rape cases.

The Supreme Court's June 25 decision said there was no legal precedent for the death penalty, but the court neglected to consider a 2006 federal law that says the rape of children by military personnel could attract capital punishment.

Attorneys for the state of Louisiana and the Justice Department made the same oversight in petitions they filed with the federal courts, the Washington Times reported.

Jindal, 37, said to be a leading contender as the running mate of presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain, said he has spoken with lawyers who represented the state "and have encouraged them both to seriously review these new facts and consider petitioning the court for a rehearing."

The case involved a man who was convicted of brutally raping his 8-year-old stepdaughter. A jury decided he should get the death penalty under a 1995 state law.

Five other US states also allow the death penalty for child-rape. Those laws were invalidated by the recent Supreme Court ruling, the report said.

"The Supreme Court got this case wrong, plain and simple," Jindal said.

The US Justice Department has no plans to independently ask the Supreme Court to hear the case again.

"Only parties to a case may petition for rehearing," the Justice Department said in a statement while acknowledging that its attorneys mistakenly failed to consider the National Defence Authorisation Act for Fiscal Year 2006 in its legal briefs.

Although the law applies only to military personnel, the Supreme Court has not decided whether it could set a precedent to execute civilians who rape children.

"Although no one has been sentenced to death for child rape under the law, we note with regard to the continued constitutionality of the law that the Supreme Court has not resolved the question whether its Eighth Amendment jurisprudence applies with equal force in the context of military capital punishment," the Justice Department statement said.

After the Supreme Court ruling last week, Jindal said he would seek to enact laws to override the decision.

The 5-4 decision written by Justice Anthony M Kennedy said the Eighth Amendment would forbid the death penalty for raping a child as "cruel and unusual punishment."

The Eighth Amendment "requires that resort to capital punishment be restrained, limited in its instances of application and reserved for the worst of crimes, those that, in the case of crimes against individuals, take the victim's life," the decision said.

The Supreme Court's ruling was denounced by the Bush administration as well as presumptive presidential nominees McCain and Democrat Barack Obama.

Jindal has been in the news of late. On Monday, he had vetoed a bill that would have doubled the salaries of state legislators.

The pay raise had infuriated voters, leading some to file "recall petitions" against the governor and two of his top allies in the Legislature.

Jindal also vetoed two more bills on Tuesday that would affect those filing ethics complaints against public officials.