Law Prof. Jeff Fisher is no stranger to the Supreme Court — he’s argued before the high court nine times. But when he stepped in front of the nine justices last week to argue the case of a convicted child rapist hoping to avoid the death penalty, the stakes were higher than they ever have been before.

Fisher, the co-director of the Stanford Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, is representing Patrick Kennedy, a Louisiana man who has been sentenced to death for raping his eight year old stepdaughter. If his death sentence is upheld, Kennedy will become the first rapist to be executed in America since 1964.

According to Fisher, such a ruling would open the door to the expansion of the death penalty as punishment for a variety of other crimes, and increase the number of inmates eligible for the ultimate penalty fivefold.

“This was definitely one of the very biggest [cases] that I’ve done, in terms of the intensity and importance,” Fisher said. “The constitutional cases always have a weightier air in the room because the Court really has the final say.”

But the constitutional implications of the case are only partially responsible for its importance to Fisher. The Court’s decision is literally a matter of life and death, something that Fisher saw firsthand after visiting Kennedy in Louisiana’s Angola State Prison.

“There are ways we would love to see this case decided for the development of the law,” Fisher continued, “but once you meet the client and get to know him and understand what the consequences are, everything changes. When you walk out of the prison that day, you say ‘whatever it takes to win this case for the client.’”

Fisher said that there are three directions the Court can go in with its ruling, which is expected to be revealed in June. The Court can either expand the death penalty and rule in favor of the state, or it can rule broadly in favor of Kennedy and strictly limit the death penalty to homicide cases. A third possibility, in which the Court would find the Louisiana statute that allows for execution of child rapists too broad, is the most likely scenario according to Fisher.

“Consensual sex between an 18 year old and a 12 year old is a capital offense right now in Louisiana,” Fisher said. “The Court may say that’s too broad.”

A ruling in favor of the state would be the most far-reaching choice the Court can make.

“If the state wins, it’s a watershed event,” Fisher said. “It would be a dramatic decision, the first time in modern jurisprudence the Court has allowed the death penalty for a crime in which somebody didn’t die.”

During oral arguments for the case last week in Washington, the Justices appeared to split along familiar partisan lines, with more conservative Justices Roberts and Scalia pressing Fisher’s argument against the death penalty, and more liberal Justices Stevens, Ginsburg and Breyer supporting Fisher’s anti-death stance.

“I’m always disappointed as a law professor when issues of the Court are so predictable because of divides,” Fisher said. “One of the things you want from the court is a legal institution, not a political one. As a professor you want legal arguments to be of a different flavor.”

Fisher wasn’t alone in preparing for the case. Three Stanford Law students accompanied Fisher to Washington for the oral arguments, traveled to Louisiana to visit Kennedy and helped write the briefs and speeches.

“From an educational perspective we are working with the best lawyers that are out there, and to work that closely with them and see them do what they do is just amazing,” said Patrick Nemeroff J.D. ‘09, who along with Andrew Dawson J.D. ‘08 and Ruth Zemel J.D. ‘09 assisted Fisher with the case.

“It wasn’t something I imagined I’d have the opportunity to do when I came to law school,” he said.