Desantis's "Death to Pedophiles" Law Is a Cynical Ploy
And It Will Probably Backfire If It's Ever Enforced
To preface my remarks, I want harsher penalties for people who commit crimes against children, esp. sex crimes. Moreover, I want them to face severe restrictions upon their release—indeed, I am open to forcing them to live away from the rest of society and even requiring them to undergo chemical castration. I am not at all sympathetic to them. I empathize with the desire to kill them and the visceral disgust people feel for them. I am a hardliner on crime wherever there is a clear and identifiable victim, and this is certainly no exception.
That said, Desantis’s law is nothing more than a cynical political ploy: His remarks prove as much. He himself recounted during the bill’s signing that the Supreme Court has already ruled the death penalty unconstitutional for crimes that don’t involve murder. He knows that there will be an injunction issued the moment this law is applied to anyone. No one will ever be executed on account of it; the most one can hope for is that this empty threat of execution acts as a deterrent. While the Supreme Court is conservative, there is no reason to think the Catholics on the bench will suddenly embrace the death penalty when it goes against the church’s current teachings—esp. when the underlying crime did not involve a murder and there is already SCOTUS precedent surrounding this very issue; in Kennedy v. Louisiana the court ruled that you cannot impose the death penalty for any crime in which the victim did not die. The lower courts will apply the existing ruling on this matter, and the Florida law will be overturned. Meanwhile Desantis will try to claim the presidential nomination on the boldness of his pedo-killer campaign—all the while claiming that the leftists who oppose this law are “pedo-groomers.” I admit, it is brilliant but it comes off as unhinged. The death penalty is not a tax cut or a regulation. It isn’t a toy. It is the most serious penalty our law allows. That he is playing games with it suggests there is something not entirely right about him.
If this law ever comes into effect, here are just a few of the problems it might cause:
It will discourage people from reporting pedophiles, esp. within their own families. It is one thing to put Uncle Fester away for ten years because he had sex with his niece, it is quite another to put him away for life—or to get him executed. This would apply to family friends and respected people within the community as well.
It will cause juries to be more reluctant to convict. While we like to pretend that we apply the same evidentiary standards to all accusations, that is not true. A jury will instinctively harbor more doubts when the death penalty is a possibility. This too, ironically, could keep more of these people in the community.
It will cause some pedophiles to kill their victims in order to stop them from telling others what happened to them. This really is an obvious effect: If child rape and child murder carry the same penalty, it makes sense to eliminate the witness. Of course, people seem not to realize this obvious consequence. I think the reason is that killing a child is so unimaginable to them that the idea never crosses their minds. But they also aren’t depraved pedophiles contemplating taking a hot shot.
There are reasons we reserve the death penalty for the crime of murder. Murders are hard to fake, while every other crime can be fabricated. There are enough disgruntled mothers throwing around accusations of pedophilia against their former husbands that we should be wary of imposing a penalty that is irrevocable. Desantis’s law will result in innocent fathers having their lives totally ruined instead of just largely ruined when their vicious ex-wives decide that they can get custody of the kids by making something up. Of course, Desantis will not increase the penalties for making a deliberately false report because this is just a ploy to win the Republican nomination, and he cannot possibly afford to lose women’s votes.
I sincerely hope that I am wrong in my assessment of this law and its likely effects. I certainly don’t have any sympathy for people who rape children: Indeed, I have no sympathy for people who harm children in any way. All forms of child abuse are horrendous and sexual abuse is uniquely disgusting. I hope his policy experiment works. That said, I don’t see it succeeding. It would certainly be more likely to hold up legally if it imposed a penalty of life in prison on the second offense; indeed, simply imposing a mandatory life sentence regardless of prior convictions without opening the door to the death penalty might hold up. As it stands, it is bound to be struck down—as Desantis, the Harvard-educated lawyer, surely knows.
Thanks for the thoughtful analysis. I've soured on DeSantis as an alternative to Trump (who I do not plan to vote for), based both on this bill and also HB 269 (not to mention his Ukraine positions (yes plural, ha). I used to bea liberal Democrat but had a bit of a political 180 in the wake of the events of 2020-21 and liberals increasing authoritarianism and identity politics extremism. Unfortunately, DeSantis doesnt seem anymore committed to freedom of expression & rule of law than lib Dems , as much as I might appreciate some of his push back against the excesses of "wokeism." I'd like to see Youngkin run at this point, but I dont see that happening.