Supreme Court gets its facts wrong in child rape decision

The Supreme Court based its argument on banning capital punishment for child rapists on the fact that 30 states that had a death penalty did not impose it for child rape and neither did the federal government. Thus, the court said, the death penalty in these cases is unconstitutional because it is "unusual."

However, it turns out that fact is fiction.

Only two years ago, according to this story, Congress revised the Uniform Code of Military Justice to allow for the death penalty for child rape. However, according to the story, "Anyone in the federal government — or anywhere else, for that matter — who knew about these developments did not tell the court."

I'm not sure the Supreme Court can call a mulligan on a decision. But perhaps now is a good time for the justices to take a closer look at the "cruel" part of this whole "cruel and unusual" argument.