Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy clearly understood that it would be tempting to let emotions overrule reason in a case that may define the court's just-ended term.

But Kennedy and his fellow justices made a proper ruling last week when, by the narrowest majority, they held that executions are the wrong penalty for child rape.

The court's 5-4 decision struck down a Louisiana law that allows capital punishment for people convicted of raping children under 12. It spares the only people in the U.S. under sentence of death for that crime -- two Louisiana men convicted of raping girls 5 and 8. The latter case was the one before the high court and involved Patrick Kennedy, 43, who was sentenced to death for the vicious rape of his 8-year-old stepdaughter.

According to Kennedy's majority opinion, it was a crime "that cannot be recounted in these pages in a way sufficient to capture in full the hurt and horror inflicted on his victim."

This crime, like any child rape, was despicable.

But, the justice added, that does not mean society's answer to such an unspeakable crime should be execution.

However devastating the crime to children, Kennedy wrote, "the death penalty is not a proportional punishment for the rape of a child." He was joined by John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.

Some child advocates also sided with the majority, opposing the death penalty in such cases. They claim that child rape by family members might not be reported if execution for the crime remained a possibility. There has also been a concern that rapists would have no incentive to spare a child's life if the punishment was the same for either crime.

The high court decision allows death sentences to continue to be imposed for crimes such as treason, espionage and terrorism, which Kennedy labeled as crimes against the state.

Yet, there is no one currently on Death Row for any of those crimes. Of the 3,300 inmates now facing execution nationwide, only the two in Louisiana were convicted of a crime other than murder. In fact, no one in the United States has been executed for rape since 1964.

The two inmates will get new sentences of life without possibility of parole and in one sense that could be worse for them. They'll have a miserable existence in solitary confinement because release into the general prison population could very well be a death sentence in itself; child rapists are viewed as despicable both inside and outside of the prison walls.

So, while they escaped the lethal injection, they may well wish at some point that they had not.

* Members of the Yakima Herald-Republic editorial board are Michael Shepard, Sarah Jenkins, Bill Lee and Karen Troianello.