Constitutional Opinion: Why CSA Must Be a Capital Crime

Children are a civil society's first trust. And when that trust is violated in the most grotesque and unspeakable way—when a predator targets the innocent, defiles their vulnerability and innocence, and shatters their innate human dignity—the social contract itself is ripped to shreds.

A just nation cannot look on and shrug at such heinous crimes.

Natural law, sacred Scripture, and centuries of moral reasoning converge on a truth we must recover: some crimes are so evil, so wicked, so unspeakably vile, so corrosive to the common good, that they demand the most severe and ultimate earthly punishment.

The Sword Is Not Held in Vain

“It is not for nothing that they hold the power of the sword, for they are God’s agents of punishment bringing retribution on the offender.” — Romans 13:4 (Revised English Bible)

When the Apostle Paul wrote those words under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he was articulating the fundamental duty of the state: to protect the innocent, restrain evil, and, when necessary, enact justice proportional to a crime.

To govern and uphold the rule of law is to wield authority—sometimes the ultimate authority—in the face of those who prey on human dignity.

Human beings are not disposable. They bear the image of the Creator. Precisely because human dignity is so high, crimes against it and its violent destruction carry the highest penalty: “Anyone who sheds human blood, for that human being his blood will be shed; because in the image of God has God made human beings” (Genesis 9:6).

Child sexual abuse is not merely a crime against the body. It is a violent desecration of a person’s very selfhood. It is a form of relational and anthropological murder. Survivors often testify that something in them dies after these heinous acts.

When a moral monster like Jason Hudson of Alabama—convicted on literal scores of counts of rape, incest, and sexual torture of children—walks into a courtroom, he represents more than individual depravity. He represents the failures of a society and legal system that claims to be just.

Indeed, in any sane and just society, a man like Jason Hudson would not be allowed to live. A society that refuses to consider the death penalty in cases like this is a society that has forgotten how evil crimes like this actually are and why it punishes evil at all.

A Deterrent?

Modern activists claim that capital punishment “doesn’t deter anything.”

Besides the obvious point that, by definition, the executed serial child sexual offender never reoffends, Holy Scripture itself warns us: “It is because sentence upon a wicked act is not promptly carried out that evildoers are emboldened to act” (Ecc. 8:11).

Justice delayed emboldens predators. Justice denied encourages them. And nothing delays and denies justice more than the worst offenders among us living to see a natural end to their lives.

The Founders understood this with crystalline clarity.

Locke taught that by entering civil society, we consent to laws that preserve the peace—including, in the gravest cases, the forfeiture of life for the destruction of another’s. This social contract is founded upon the idea of the sacrality of the human person. Human dignity is inherently and naturally inviolable, and crimes against it forfeit the perpetrator’s own natural right to life.

Refuse to Punish Evil, and You Commit Evil

No society can endure when it treats its weakest and most vulnerable members as expendable. Policies and sentences that shrug at child sexual assault—or worse, answer it only with paperwork and parole hearings—effectively declare that children exist at the mercy of the reporbate.

It is a dark confession that our nation presently tolerates monsters who prey upon innocence and then live out quiet decades behind bars, fed, clothed, and safe from earthly judgment.

We can do better. We must do better—indeed, we are morally obligated to do so.

If the state does not bear the sword in vain, then let the state not keep the sword rusted in its sheath.

Mercy and Justice Are Not Mutually Exclusive

To argue for capital punishment in child sexual abuse cases is not to argue against mercy.

Christian mercy recognizes the eternal stakes of the soul—even the soul that has done unspeakable harm. But Christian justice recognizes that some earthly debts must be paid.

Love for innocent children demands that our punishments be proportionate to the crimes.

There is a reason Scripture links bloodshed with accountability. A murderer steals a life. The child predator steals a future, and inflicts a living death that endures for decades. 

Many child victims and survivors struggle to trust, love, or participate in civil society without suffocating fear ever again. When a predator destroys the very conditions that make life livable, he forfeits his own claim upon society’s protection.

Some Christians sincerely (and even piously) object that capital punishment denies the possibility of redemption. But the scandal of the Cross itself proves that justice precedes reconciliation. We are not reconciled to God because our guilt was ignored; we are reconciled because our guilt was atoned for (see 2 Cor. 5:21; Isa. 53:6; Romans 8:3ff).

Contrary to pacifist claims, the Cross is not the suspension of justice, but is its ultimate fulfillment. Real reconciliation and redemption requires real judgment.

If the state refuses to punish the most heinous offenders proportionately, it is not practicing compassion. It is practicing cruelty against the innocent.

A Nation That Defends Its Children and Puts Fear into Offenders

Not every sin is equal, nor is every crime equal, as the Westminster Shorter Catechism helpfully reminds us:

“Q. 83: Are all transgressions of the law equally heinous?

A. 83: Some sins in themselves, and by reason of several aggravations, are more heinous in the sight of God than others.”

By reason of “several aggravations,” child predation falls into the category of a capital crime.

Child predators frequently cross state lines to traffic children. They exploit digital platforms intentionally seeking out the youngest of the young on which to prey. They often evade justice by moving from jurisdiction to jurisdiction (or even church to church, or school to school). They destroy the hopes, dreams, and dignity of the innocent and violate the sanctity of childhood.

Therefore, Congress must codify a federal capital statute for aggravated acts of child sexual assault and exploitation.

This is not to say that every criminal must die. But those who intentionally, repeatedly, and without remorse shatter childhood and transgress against human sacrality must be put to death.

A predator who ravages a child’s body and warps their soul has declared war on the common good. He has attacked humankind’s most sacred trust. He has, by his own hand, torn himself from the protections of the civilized and rightly ordered liberty.

When the state executes such a person—after due process, after every appeal—it is not choosing vengeance. It is choosing allegiance to the image of God stamped upon every little one.

A just nation defends children and places fear into the hearts of the depraved.

A cowardly, weak, and immoral nation allows its monsters to live.

We must choose what nation we will be.