I cannot imagine any punishment that would actually constitute justice for any form of rape, given the impact on the victim. The closest I can come is to tattoo "rapist" on their foreheads, thereby forcing them to live in a world where everyone they see knows what they did.

I still have deep qualms about capital punishment--I don't believe the state should have that power, and I have zero faith that it would be applied evenly. Throw in the research showing that death penalties have no deterrent effect, and what we're left with is simply retribution. Add to that how frequently we get it wrong, convicting innocent (usually poor and Black) people who can't afford a competent defense, and we're left with a system that no one loves except the voters.

Where the even thornier problem enters is the trial-by-jury feature of our criminal justice system. Prosecutors say it's harder to convince a jury to convict when the defendant faces the possibility of execution. In fact, juries are even reluctant to convict in states where guilty verdicts cause offenders to be registered as sex offenders.

So we're back to the underlying issue, the patriarchal tilt away from justice and away from holding men accountable in any way for the way they behave toward women. Until female lives are universally regarded as equal to male ones in importance, sexual violence will be tolerated, because we are not willing to take the kind of measures that would actually address the problem.