> The reason it does not bear the same penalty is pragmatic: if the punishment were the same then why should a rapist not kill the victim as well? The real re

> The reason it does not bear the same penalty is pragmatic: if the punishment were the same then why should a rapist not kill the victim as well? The real reason is even more prosaic in the U.S.: the Supreme Court in Coker v. Georgia decided that it was unconstitutional, despite having been constitutional and practiced by some number of states for nearly 200 years. It doesn't get any more philosophical than that: six men didn't like it, so the nation doesn't have it any more. But, to the grandparent's point, rape has been a capital crime in the past, and there's no reason it couldn't be again.