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WASHINGTON — A divided Supreme Court Wednesday effectively slammed the door on the prospect of expanding capital punishment in America, holding that the death penalty for violent crimes that do not end in a death is unconstitutional regardless of the victim's age.

In the 5-4 decision, the court overturned a Louisiana law that called for the death penalty for raping a child and removed from that state's death row a man convicted of the brutal rape of his 8-year-old stepdaughter.

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the opinion saying, in essence, that the crime, awful as it is, does not merit capital punishment. "The incongruity between the crime of child rape and the harshness of the death penalty poses risks of over-punishment and counsels against a constitutional ruling that the death penalty can be expanded to include this offense," he wrote.

The opinion is one of a series of Supreme Court decisions in recent years scaling back the death penalty and citing a national consensus on limiting its application. In 2002, the court held that states could not execute the mentally retarded. Three years later, the court prohibited defendants who were juveniles at the time they committed murder from being put to death.

"We live in a society that appears to embrace some aspects of the death penalty, but the direction we have gone in recent years is to limit it, not broaden it," said Billy Sothern, a New Orleans lawyer who was part of the team that represented the defendant, Patrick Kennedy. He was one of only two men nationwide facing execution for crimes that didn't result in a death, both in Louisiana.

Sen. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, criticized the court's decision at a Chicago news conference. "I have said repeatedly that I think that the death penalty should be applied in very narrow circumstances for the most egregious of crimes," he said. "I think that the rape of a small child, 6 or 8 years old, is a heinous crime, and if a state makes a decision that under narrow, limited, well-defined circumstances, the death penalty is at least potentially applicable, that that does not violate our Constitution."

Obama has frequently cited the near-abolishment of the death penalty in Illinois as one of his top legislative accomplishments.

His likely Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain, also disagreed with the ruling. "Today's Supreme Court ruling is an assault on law enforcement's efforts to punish these heinous felons for the most despicable crime," McCain said. "That there is a judge anywhere in America who does not believe that the rape of a child represents the most heinous of crimes, which is deserving of the most serious of punishments, is profoundly disturbing."

More than a decade ago, Louisiana passed a statute making rape a capital crime if the victim was younger than 12, contending that the rape of a child placed the crime in a different category.

Several other states, including Texas, Georgia and South Carolina, have passed laws similar to Louisiana's.