STATE of Tennessee v. Courtney KNOWLES

“Hard cases, it has frequently been observed, are apt to introduce bad law.” Winterbottom v. Wright, 152 Eng. Rep. 403, 404 (1842). The same is true of “cases in which ... moral indignation ... is aroused” by egregious facts. Glanville Williams, The Sanctity of Life and the Criminal Law 105 (1957). The defendant here, convicted of the rape of a child and already serving a forty-year sentence for related federal offenses, deserves no sympathy. Because, however, constitutional principles sometimes get in the way of what might otherwise qualify as a just punishment, I must dissent from my…