With its decision at the end of June in Kennedy v. Louisiana, the US Supreme Court held for the first time ever that a statute providing for the death

White House press secretary Dana Perino this morning said the Justice Department is looking into whether the Supreme Court ruled mistakenly last week to exclude the death penalty for child rapists.
"The White House was disturbed by the New York Times report that the court’s decision might be based on a mistake, and if a federal statute was missed we would expect the Department of Justice would be looking at options that there might be to correct that error, and they are doing so," Perino said.
inted out, on his blog, CAAFlog, that the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2006, which was passed by Congress, did set out death as punishment for the rape of a child.

By LINDA GREENHOUSE WASHINGTON - When the Supreme Court ruled last week that the death penalty for raping a child was unconstitutional, the majority noted that a child rapist could face the ultimate penalty in only six states — not in any of the 30 other states that have the death penalty, and not under the jurisdiction of the federal government either.
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w blog pointed out over the weekend that Congress, in fact, revised the sex crimes section of the Uniform Code of Military Justice in 2006 to add child rape to the military death penalty. The revisions were in the National Defense Authorization Act that year. President Bush signed that bill into law