No more killing children in 18 states

[Happy Skunk]

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the Constitution forbids the execution of killers who were under 18 when they committed their crimes, ending a practice used in 19 states.

The 5-4 decision throws out the death sentences of about 70 juvenile murderers and bars states from seeking to execute minors for future crimes.

The executions, the court said, violate the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

The ruling continues the court's practice of narrowing the scope of the death penalty, which justices reinstated in 1976. The court in 1988 outlawed executions for those 15 and younger when they committed their crimes. Three years ago justices banned executions of the mentally retarded.

Tuesday's ruling prevents states from making 16- and 17-year-olds eligible for execution.

"The age of 18 is the point where society draws the line for many purposes between childhood and adulthood. It is, we conclude, the age at which the line for death eligibility ought to rest," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote.

Juvenile offenders have been put to death in recent years in only a few other countries, including Iran, Pakistan, China and Saudi Arabia. Kennedy cited international opposition to the practice.

"It is proper that we acknowledge the overwhelming weight of international opinion against the juvenile death penalty, resting in large part on the understanding that the instability and emotional imbalance of young people may often be a factor in the crime," he wrote.

Kennedy noted most states don't allow the execution of juvenile killers and those that do use the penalty infrequently. The trend, he said, is to abolish the practice because "our society views juveniles ... as categorically less culpable than the average criminal."

In a dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia disputed that there is a clear trend of declining juvenile executions to justify a growing consensus against the practice.

"The court says in so many words that what our people's laws say about the issue does not, in the last analysis, matter: 'In the end our own judgment will be brought to bear on the question of the acceptability of the death penalty,"' he wrote.

"The court thus proclaims itself sole arbiter of our nation's moral standards," Scalia wrote.

The Supreme Court has permitted states to impose capital punishment since 1976 and more than 3,400 inmates await execution in the 38 states that allow death sentences.

Justices were called on to draw an age line in death cases after Missouri's highest court overturned the death sentence given to Christopher Simmons, who was 17 when he kidnapped a neighbor, hog-tied her and threw her off a bridge in 1993. Prosecutors say he planned the burglary and killing of Shirley Crook and bragged that he could get away with it because of his age.

The four most liberal justices had already gone on record in 2002, calling it "shameful" to execute juvenile killers. Those four, joined by Kennedy, formed Tuesday's decision: Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, Justice Clarence Thomas and Scalia, as expected, voted to uphold the executions. They were joined by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

The 19 states allow executions for people under age 18 are Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Utah, Texas and Virginia.

from cnn.com

[Happy Skunk]

Actually 16 states and 3 commonwealths.

[Malik Shabazz]

Originally Posted by cnn.com

The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the Constitution forbids the execution of killers who were under 18 when they committed their crimes, ending a practice used in 19 states.

Originally Posted by Happy Skunk

No more killing children in 18 states

Is it 19 or is it 18? :???:

I'm so confused.

[Malik Shabazz]

Originally Posted by Happy Skunk

Actually 16 states and 3 commonwealths.

Thanks for the clarification. I feel much better now.

[fallout]

Obviously you guys should have looked for a fallout meltdown thread before posting this.

[Malik Shabazz]

Originally Posted by fallout

Obviously you guys should have looked for a fallout meltdown thread before posting this.

I saw that, I just wanted to give you another opportunity to melt down.

Beside, post count is post count.

[Happy Skunk]

Sorry that thread was poorly labebled and GP only posted a link. Anywa, did you meltdown fallout? i didn't read through.

[fallout]

Originally Posted by Happy Skunk

Sorry that thread was poorly labebled and GP only posted a link. Anywa, did you meltdown fallout? i didn't read through.

I think I might have. How was it for you?

[E. Blackadder]

Originally Posted by Tom Smith

I think I have an analogy that might explain it. Let's suppose you know an orthodox Jewish family. They live according to all these rules, many of them which are quite inconvenient. They believe they all ultimately stem from God Himself, via various interpretations. You think, well, I certainly don't think it's plausible that God doesn't want them to fix a clogged sink on Saturday, but they could probaby explain their reasons quite well if you asked them, and you have to hand it to them for sticking to the rules they are committed to living by.

Now take the Supreme Court. They pretty obviously are just making it up as they go along, at the same time as they profess to be doing just what the Constitution or some statute requires them to do. But too often, they are just transparently doing whatever policy thing seems like a good idea to 5 or 6 of them. That sticks in the law oriented person's craw. But it doesn't stop there. It would be one thing to say, you know, the Framers, as we know from the recently discovered cache of Madison's letters, did not think cutting off someone's ears was particularly cruel as punishment goes. It was a tough time, yada, yada. Nonetheless, we are going to rule that otosection is banned by the 8th Amendment. We say it's cruel, and that's that, and oh, by the way, here's the best reasoning that a bright young thing who graduated from law school 18 months ago can up with that that in fact is how we must rule. Fine. I don't care. By all means, let's not cut off ears, even if the Framers thought it was OK.

But what the court does when they make things up, more often than not, is make up stupid laws. If they are going to just make things up, couldn't they make up smart things, practical things? So for my current hobby horse: If you're going to make up some new law about racial segregation in prisons, why not make up some law to the effect that you can't separate prisoners by race, unless it satisfies a three part test, which is, of course, just a one part test, that being something like, unless failure to do so would result in lots of prisoners getting their throats cut in the middle of the night.

To go back to the original analogy, orthodox Jews have to obey a lot of rules that strike me as impractical, but they really believe they come from God and presumably are sincere in their efforts to do His will. The Supreme Court is like a religion where every year the elders come out with new rules that everyone knows they are just making up, and instead of saying, Hey! It's OK after all to fill up your car on Saturday!, it's something like, Gosh, I'm sorry, but you can only eat soup with a fork! To be blunt, the Supreme Court is a policy making body, and they suck at making policy.

...

And what is this use of international precedents? I mean, puhleeese. I mean, maybe if you have some novel question of law that has just never come up in U.S. law, like the ownership of marine mammals stranded in tanks aboard ships in international waters, for which we turn to the traditional laws of Yap, which happens to speak to this point, because of their frequent encounters with flying fish. Maybe then. But, O My Court, we already had law on this, and you made it.

Originally Posted by Justice Kennedy

The court's ruling today held that, while the "overwhelming weight of international opinion" was not controlling, it nevertheless provided "respected and significant confirmation" for the majority's finding.

Originally Posted by Joshua Marshal, in The New Republic

"There is barely a country in Europe where the death penalty was abolished in response to public opinion rather than in spite of it. In other words, if these countries' political cultures are morally superior to America's, it's because they're less democratic."

The Dueling Opinions

Last, Orin Kerr weighs in.

I have just finished working my way through the opinions in Roper v. Simmons. As someone who greatly values stare decisis, I was disappointed by Justice Kennedy's majority opinion. There just isn't much there to justify overruling a 16-year-old precedent and striking down 18 state laws. I'm not sure about the juvenile death penalty as a matter of policy, but I found Justice Scalia's powerful dissent pretty tough to refute as a matter of constitutional law.

One interesting part of Roper is the incentives it creates (together with Atkins v. Virginia) for those seeking judicial abolition of the death penalty. Roper and Atkins tell capital defense litigators to delay their cases for as many years as possible. Drag out the appeals for a long, long time. During that period, have activists try to encourage legislators in a few select states to enact new legislative restrictions on the death penalty. It doesn't matter if those restrictions have any actual effect on how cases are charged; bans in states that do not actually bring any death penalty cases are fine, as the real audience is the Supreme Court. Years down the road, you can then use the new legislative restrictions in a few states as "objective indicia of consensus" that the practice of using the death penalty in such cases is impermissible. In effect, the changing practice in a handful of states can be bootstrapped by the courts into a constitutional ban that applies to all states.

Notably, the bootstrapping can be prospective: evidence of changing attitudes in years following the crime and conviction can be used to trump then-governing law. This seems to be what happened in Roper. In 1989, the Court held that it was permissible to execute persons for murders committed at the age of 16 and 17. In 1993, Christopher Simmons committeed his heinous murder, and in 1994, Simmons was convicted and sentenced to death. Then, in the 11 years after Simmons was convicted and before the Supreme Court decided its case, 4 states decided end potential juvenile capital liability. ... Had Roper been scheduled for execution soon after his conviction, executing him presumably would have been constitutional. Executing him apparently became unconstitutional only years later, after Atkins loosened up the Eighth Amendment a bit and a few states had banned the juvenile death penalty.

Is anyone in the government doing his job, or do they just mail it in?

[Harry]

Based on the title of this thread, I can't believe it hasn't degenerated into an abortion discussion yet.