Idaho House unanimously passes child sex abuse death penalty bill

BOISE (Idaho Capital Sun) — The Idaho House on Monday unanimously passed a bill to allow the death penalty for adults who sexually abuse children age 12 and younger in Idaho.

Similar to his bill that stalled last year, House Bill 380,

cosponsored by Rep. Bruce Skaug, R-Nampa, would allow the death penalty in a new criminal charge the bill creates: aggravated lewd conduct with children age 12 and younger.

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

“Unfortunately, Idaho has some of the widest or most lenient statutes on rape of a child in the nation,” Skaug told House lawmakers.

No negative debate on death penalty bill on Idaho House floor

The U.S. Supreme Court in 2008 blocked death penalties for child rape in Kennedy v. Louisiana. Florida passed a child rape death penantly law two years ago.

Five other states are considering child rape death penalty bills, Skaug said. 

He 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.

Bracing for a legal challenge to the bill, Skaug told lawmakers in committee 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 on the House Judiciary, Rules and Administration Committee last week. “That’s my professional opinion. That’s the opinion of many other attorneys.”

The Idaho House passed the new bill on Monday with 63 votes in favor and no votes against.

No lawmaker debated against the bill on the House floor. 

To become law, Idaho bills must pass the House and Senate, and avoid the governor’s veto.

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

Last week, Idaho Gov. Brad Little 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.

Seven lawmakers were absent for the child sex abuse death penalty bill’s floor vote — including four of the nine House Democrats, including House Minority Leader Ilana Rubel and Rep. Chris Mathias, both from Boise, who opposed advancing the bill in committee last week. 

The five House Democrats present for Monday’s House floor vote all voted in support of the bill. 

RELATED | Death penalty bill for certain sex crimes against children heads to Idaho House

Idaho House Republican leader says U.S. Supreme Court was wrong

House Assistant Majority Leader Josh Tanner, R-Eagle, another cosponsor of the child sex abuse death penalty bill, said the U.S. Supreme Court was wrong. 

“Reading back through that Supreme Court case, it shocked me that they could get it so wrong — that you could rape an 8-year-old girl in a way that she had to have massive surgery just to just to get by from the aspect of the physical damage, let alone the mental, emotional damage that they deal with for decades after this,” Tanner told House lawmakers. “But I don’t think this is necessarily a good bill. I think this is just a necessary bill that we have to do to protect the children of this great state.”

Rep. John Shirts, R-Weiser, a prosecutor in the Air Force Reserve, said “there are things that are so horrific that people do to children there’s nothing more than ultimate punishment that is just.”

And he suggested Idaho’s bill would help the court re-evaluate the issue.

“Some people might argue that this doesn’t have any binding on the court. It really does,” Shirt said. “It shows what our will, what the state’s will, in these types of cases, are. It goes to that national consensus analysis under the Eight Amendment.”

This is Skaug’s second attempt at child sex abuse death penalty bill

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. 

Skaug and Tanner’s new bill this year — cosponsored by eight other Idaho lawmakers — would 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 “geital-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.”

Lewd conduct against minors age 12 and younger would only be eligible for the death penalty if cases involve at least three aggravating factors. 

The bill spells out more than a dozen aggravating factors, including already being found guilty of a crime that requires sex offender registration, committing lewd conduct against the same victim at least three separate times, being in a position of trust or having “supervisory or disciplinary power over the victim,” penetration with a penis, kidnapping, human trafficking the child, torture, using force or coercion, and being armed with a weapon.

Rep. John Gannon, D-Boise, was among 10 House Democrats who voted against the bill in the House last year. But he was the first lawmaker to debate in favor of the bill on the House floor Monday.

“I see this as a kid’s bill,” Gannon said on the House floor. “And I see it as being extremely important — that those who have that proclivity now, today, go get your help, stay away from kids, and let’s not have to ever use this bill — because you did the right thing and took care of the issue that you have.”

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