Supreme Court, 5-4, Forbids Execution in Juvenile Crime. Clarence Thomas, Renquist, Scalia, O'Connor Dissent

March 9, 2005 Tron Nick

72 People on Death Row Affected

Concluding that the United States and the world have turned against the death penalty for youthful offenders, the Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that the Constitution categorically bars capital punishment for crimes committed before the age of 18. The 5-to-4 decision, which upheld a ruling by the Missouri Supreme Court, will move 72 people off death row in 12 states. It represented an about-face for a court that only 16 years ago rejected the argument that the execution of those who kill at the age of 16 or 17 violated the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against "cruel and unusual punishments." Writing for the court on Tuesday, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who voted with the majority 16 years ago, said the new decision was necessary to keep pace with the "evolving standards of decency" that for the last 50 years have shaped the Supreme Court's view of what constitutes cruel and unusual punishments. Justice Kennedy said that not only did 30 states - five more than 16 years ago - now reject the death penalty for juveniles, but that "it is fair to say that the United States now stands alone in a world that has turned its face against the juvenile death penalty." Since 1990, he noted, only seven countries outside the United States have executed people for crimes they committed as juveniles, and all seven - Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Nigeria, China and Congo - have disavowed the practice. There have been 19 such executions in the United States since 1990, most recently in 2003. Once the Supreme Court agreed in January of last year to decide the issue, all executions that stood to be affected by the decision were put on hold. [more]

JUST GET RID OF IT
The death penalty remains twisted by a whole array of distortions. Most crucially, we now know, thanks to the development of DNA evidence, that the process produces fatal errors in an appalling number of cases, and there is no sure hedge against that. The death penalty executes minorities in such disproportion that the disparity invites suspicions of prejudice. Lousy lawyering is deadly, mostly to low-income defendants. The death penalty fails to take even severe mental illness into account. And the penalty is applied unevenly among the states. Of the 22 juveniles executed in the United States since 1976, 13 were concentrated in Texas. Surely life and death decisions shouldn't depend upon geographical happenstance. The death penalty both ill-becomes us and ill-serves us. No study has ever been able to show that it discourages the crimes it punishes. Murder does not flourish where it has never been applied and murder does not rise where the practice has been ended. The blunt truth is that the death penalty is simply vengeful and exists in this country to a degree otherwise unknown among developed nations as the product of demagogic and vindictive politics, not of reasoned justice. [ more ]

Pictured above: In light of the Court's decision, Prince William County's chief prosecutor has dropped his plans to seek the death penalty against sniper Lee Boyd Malvo, shown entering a Spotsylvania County courtroom last year. [more]
It is dangerous to give governments—whether state or federal—the power to kill people. And it's not only because of their incompetence in convicting the right people. They could easily misuse that power to execute people for political reasons. [more]