In a 5-4 vote, the court said the Louisiana law allowing the death penalty to be imposed in such cases violates the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

"The death penalty is not a proportional punishment for the rape of a child," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in his majority opinion. His four liberal colleagues joined him, while the four more conservative justices dissented.

There has not been an execution in the United States for a crime that did not also involve the death of the victim in 44 years.

Patrick Kennedy, 43, was sentenced to death for the rape of his 8-year-old stepdaughter in Louisiana. He is one of two people in the United States, both in Louisiana, who have been condemned to death for a rape that was not also accompanied by a killing.

The Supreme Court banned executions for rape in 1977 in a case in which the victim was an adult woman.

Forty-five states ban the death penalty for any kind of rape, and the other five states allow it for child rapists. Montana, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas allow executions in such cases if the defendant had previously been convicted of raping a child.

The court struggled over how to apply standards laid out in decisions barring executions for the mentally retarded and people younger than 18 when they committed murder. In those cases, the court cited trends in the states away from capital punishment.

Two claims remain against Grasso's $187.5 million compensation package from the exchange, which was challenged by Spitzer as exorbitant for a not-for-profit organization.

In the decision affirming a lower court's ruling, Chief Judge Judith Kaye says the challenges were based on the size of the compensation package. But she says state law required more evidence to void such a payment.

Grasso argued that a private interest like NYSE should be free to set its own compensation.

The Brussels-based rights organization, Equipo Nizkor, names the suspects as John Demjanjuk, a retired, 88-year-old auto worker in Ohio who is also being sought by Germany; Anton Tittjung; Josias Kumpf; and Johann Leprich.

All four face deportation from the United States but no country is willing to take them in, the group said.

The group said it is acting under Spain's principle of universal jurisdiction. This states that war crimes, crimes against humanity, terrorism, torture and other heinous offenses can be prosecuted in Spain even if they are alleged to have been committed abroad.

Spanish judges have used the principle to go after the late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and figures from Argentina's so-called "dirty war" of the 1970s and 80s, among other people.

The justices will likely hear oral arguments around the end of the year in the case of Edward Jerome Harbison, who was convicted in the 1983 beating death of an elderly woman in Chattanooga.

Federal appeals courts have taken different positions on the issue, making the case a good one for the court to resolve, the Bush administration said. The administration wants the justices to decide that federal law for indigent capital defendants does not extend taxpayer support to inmates' efforts to win clemency.

Separately, Harbison's execution is on hold after a federal judge ruled in September that Tennessee's three-drug lethal injection method amounted to cruel and unusual punishment because of the "substantial risk of unnecessary pain" to the inmate. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is now considering that case, following the high court's decision in April that upheld the constitutionality of lethal injection in Kentucky.

Harbison asked in 2006 to expand the responsibilities of his federal public defenders to also represent him in state clemency proceedings if he lost his court challenges.

Justice Department lawyers have argued against Harbison's request. "There is no constitutional right either to clemency itself or to counsel to pursue it," Justice Department lawyers said in the filing.

The 5-4 decision addresses a basic legal point, that courts can only hear cases when plaintiffs suffer actual injuries that are traceable to a defendant's conduct.

In the case before the court, APCC Services Inc. is trying to collect from Sprint Communications Co. and AT&T Inc. for coinless long-distance calls over the networks of Sprint and AT&T.

APCC provides billing and collection services on behalf of pay-phone service providers.

Writing for the majority, Justice Stephen Breyer said APCC may pursue the claim, even though it has promised to turn over any money from the lawsuit to pay-phone service providers.

A federal appeals court said the case could go forward because the pay-phone providers transferred the compensation claims to the collection agency and agreed to finance APCC's lawsuit. Breyer agreed, saying that for centuries, courts have found ways to allow those to whom compensation claims are assigned to bring suit.

In dissent, Chief Justice John Roberts said APCC has "nothing to gain from their lawsuit" and that under settled legal principles, that fact required dismissal of their complaint. Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito joined the dissent.

Last year, the Supreme Court ruled that pay-phone companies that complained they hadn't been adequately compensated could sue long-distance carriers.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has used authority given to him by Congress in 2005 to ignore environmental and other laws and regulations to move forward with hundreds of miles of fencing in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas.

The case rejected by the court involved a two-mile section of fence in the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area near Naco, Ariz. The section has since been built.

"I am extremely disappointed in the court's decision," Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said. "This waiver will only prolong the department from addressing the real issue: their lack of a comprehensive border security plan."

Thompson chairs the House Homeland Security Committee. He and 13 other House democrats — including six other committee chairs — filed a brief in support of the environmentalists' appeal.

Earlier this year, Chertoff waived more than 30 laws and regulations in an effort to finish building 670 miles of fence along the southwest border. Administration officials have said that invoking the legal waivers — which Congress authorized in 1996 and 2005 laws — will cut through bureaucratic red tape and sidestep environmental laws that currently stand in the way of fence construction.