By David L Snelling

Miami – Florida is among 15 states asking United States Attorney General Pam Bondi to challenge a United States Supreme Court ruling which bans execution for convicted child rapists.

In the 2008 state of Louisana versus Patrick O’ Neal, the SCOTUS overturned Neal’s death sentenced after he was convicted of the 1998 rape of his 8-year-old stepdaughter in Louisiana.

This aligned with the state’s 1995 law allowing pedophiles to be executed if they raped a victim younger than 13.

However, the highest court in the nation ruled the death penalty for pedophiles was unconstitutional because the victim did not die and sentenced him to life in prison instead

The ruling prohibits the death penalty for pedophiles and in Florida’s case, preempts Florida’s 2023 law which allows the state to expand execution for adults convicted of sexual battery of a child under 12.

Another bill signed into law this year by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis imposes the penalty for child trafficking and murder committed by undocumented immigrants.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier led a letter-writing campaign with support from 14 other department of justice heads in the U.S. to encourage Bondi to support the execution of child rapists.

But she will need to challenge the SCOTUS ruling.

“We have every confidence that, with President Trump’s strong leadership and with principled, rule-of-law Justices on the Supreme Court, Kennedy’s days are numbered, and child rapists can be appropriately punished for their unspeakable crimes,” Uthmeier wrote in the letter.

Louisiana’s Chief Legal Officer Liz Murrill also supported the execution of child rapists and co-signed the letter.

“The U.S. Supreme Court needs to reverse this egregiously wrong ruling,” Murrill said according to Florida Phoenix, announcing that her name would be slotted alongside the 14 other sitting and former Republican Attorneys General. Andrew Bailey, former Missouri Attorney General and now codeputy director of the FBI, was one of the signatories.

Florida has toughened its stands on execution.

In 2023, DeSantis sponsored a bill that has the lowest threshold in the nation for jury recommendations for the death penalty to unanimous decision to a 8-4 vote.

The law was passed after a jury couldn’t reach a unanimous decision on recommending the death penalty for Nickolas Cruz, who pleaded guilty to killing 17 people at Stoneman Douglas High School and injuring another 17 in 2018.

Cruz was sentenced to life in prison without parole instead.

This year, DeSantis has signed death warrants for Florida to execute nine people on death row, setting a new state record for executions in one year.

That’s more than any other state, and DeSantis has overseen more executions in a year than any other Florida governor since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.

Though data is not available on the number of convicted pedophiles currently serving prison time in Florida, the state is ranked among the top seven states with the most registered sex offenders with 32,460, as of 2024, according to SafeHome.org

Texas leads the nation with 75,710, followed by Califorina (60,615), New York (42,985), Michigan (40,392), Illinois (34,056 and Oregon comes in sixth with 33,421.

More than 795,000 people were listed on state sex offender registries as of August 2024, which is a spike of about 8,000 more people than in 2023.

Since 2019, the number of registered sex offenders in the U.S. has risen by nearly 43,000, or around six percent.

The FBI does not report statistics on sexual abuse of children specifically, but it is another offense that typically leads to sex offender registration.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) reports annual statistics for the mistreatment of children, including sexual abuse.

Nationally, nearly 11 percent of all victims of child maltreatment, the official term HHS uses, were victims of sexual abuse.

That makes child sex abuse the third most common type of child abuse, behind neglect and physical abuse.

Across all states and Puerto Rico, more than 59,000 children were reported sex abuse victims in 2022 (the most recent available year), which is very similar to the number reported in 2021.

Accordingly, the population-adjusted rate of child sex abuse did not change between 2021 and 2022, hovering at 82 victims per 100,000 nationwide.