• Originally published in the Copley News Service March 30, 2005 Wednesday Copyright 2005 Copley News Service

By Marc H. Morial

The slow narrowing of the legal justification of the death penalty in America continues.

In early March a bitterly divided U.S. Supreme Court barred the use of capital punishment against convicted murderers who were older than 15 but younger than 18 at the time they committed their crimes.

The ruling means the rescinding of the death sentence for 72 inmates in 12 states who were juveniles when they committed their crimes; the harshest punishment they can now receive is life without the possibility of parole. And it erases the stigma the United States carried as one of only two nations in the world (the other being Somalia) whose laws upheld capital punishment for juveniles.

The Supreme Court in 1988 had barred the execution of convicted murderers who killed when they were younger than 16, but a year later upheld capital punishment for those who were 16 and 17 years old.

The 5-to-4 current decision involved a case from Missouri, Roper v. Simmons, that resulted from a horrible crime. The defendant, Christopher Simmons, 17 years old and a high school junior at the time, burglarized a home with an accomplice, bound and gagged the wife and mother who was home alone at the time, drove her to a nearby state park, and threw her from a bridge spanning a river to drown in the waters below. He was arrested within days, after bragging to friends about the killing.

Few words exist which can adequately describe and condemn the terrible act Christopher Simmons committed or support the life sentence he deserves.

But the National Urban League agrees with the Supreme Court's decision in striking down capital punishment for juveniles. We agree with it in overarching terms because we have always viewed the penalty as being morally wrong and in practical terms, in the United States, irredeemably tainted with racial and class bias.

The Supreme Court majority of Justices Anthony Kennedy, Stephen G. Bryer, David Souter, John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg pointedly noted "the overwhelming weight of international opinion against the juvenile death penalty" and the fact that although 19 states in the United States have laws permitting the execution of juveniles, only three - Texas, Oklahoma and Virginia - had executed juveniles in the past decade.

Furthermore, the Supreme Court's majority said its ruling in this case was a logical step forward from its 6-to-3 ruling three years ago prohibiting the execution of mentally retarded offenders.

Drawing upon psychological studies, they cited three particular reasons as bulwarks of their stance: That those under 18 lack maturity and a developed sense of responsibility, which "often result in impetuous and ill-considered actions and decisions;" that they are "more vulnerable or susceptible to negative influences, including peer pressure, and thus have less control of their emotions and actions;" and that the "traits of juveniles are more transitory, less fixed" than those of adults.

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Sandra Day O'Connor dissented in bitter words from the majority ruling.

Experts differ as to whether the series of recent rulings by the Supreme Court that have exempted classes of those convicted of murder from being put to death foreshadow the eventual abolition of the death penalty itself or, instead, a "fine-tuning" of the law in order to solidify its legality.

In our view, however, the fine-tuning should inevitably lead to abolition - for moral reasons, yes; and also because the very attempt to apply capital punishment is untenable.

For example, we know the death penalty is overwhelmingly disproportionately imposed upon the poor: nearly 90 percent of those facing capital charges cannot afford their own attorney.

And we know that race plays a stunning role in its imposition.

While 50 percent of all murder victims are white, 84 percent of the victims in death-penalty cases are white. Since the death penalty was reimposed in 1976, blacks, less than 13 percent of the population as a whole, have made up 35 percent of those executed, represent 43 percent of those now on the death rows nationwide and 67 percent of death-row inmates in federal prisons. Since 1976, 11 whites have been executed for killing blacks; 144 blacks have been executed for killing whites.

Finally, the fatal "inevitability of caprice and mistake" in administering the death penalty that the late constitutional scholar, Charles L. Black Jr., pointed to has been underscored in recent years by the remarkable fact that, as of today, 119 convicted men on death row have been released from prison because, for some, their guilt at trial had not been proved, and, for others, they were found to have been completely innocent of the crime they were convicted of and sentenced to death for.

In all instances, the developments that led to their freedom came years - in some cases, decades - after they were to have been put to death.

The death penalty is inherently unjust, inherently unfairly applied; and the Supreme Court's decision barring it for juveniles is a step in the right direction. This issue is a matter of life and death.

• Marc H. Morial is president and chief executive officer of the National Urban League.