Editorial

USA: End the Juvenile Death Penalty

The Supreme Court declined this week to reconsider a 13-year-old decision permitting executions of convicts who committed their crimes while they were still juveniles. 4 justices dissented, arguing that the logic of the court's ban last term on executing retarded people applied also to the juvenile death penalty -- that a consensus had developed that the practice was cruel and unusual punishment that violated the Constitution's Eighth Amendment. Unsurprisingly, a majority of the court disagreed, leaving the states free to continue killing kids.

 The juvenile death penalty -- with its arrogant assumption that society can judge whether someone who is still a child will prove redeemable over the course of his life -- is one of the least defensible aspects of American capital punishment. It is impossible to contend seriously that many youthful killers will be deterred by the threat of execution years later. And while the dissenters can be accused of seeking to impose their policy preferences in this area on the states, the court's prior cases have not exactly provided a model of reason. According to current case law, it's fine for a state to execute someone for crimes committed at 17 or even 16. But 15 is beyond the pale. Exactly where, one is entitled to ask, does the Constitution make that principled distinction?

 Justice Antonin Scalia, in a recent article, derided the court for drawing such lines, noting correctly that age limits are its own creation. The Eighth Amendment, he argued, prohibits now only what it prohibited in the 18th century -- and the execution of children was okay then. But nearly a century ago, the court rejected so stark an approach to the amendment, and the one it ultimately adopted instead -- which reads the Constitution as forbidding whatever punishments society evolves to regard as cruel and unusual -- requires the court to draw this line somewhere. Distinguishing between legal childhood and adulthood seems a far more rational place to put it than between the sophomore and junior years of high school. 

Editorial

USA: The Disgrace of Juvenile Executions

 Last June the Supreme Court barred the execution of the mentally retarded as cruel and unusual punishment, noting that such criminals have limited capacity to understand their moral culpability or be deterred by the threat of execution. This week, sadly, the court declined to extend that same reasoning to juveniles. In rejecting the appeal of a death row inmate in Kentucky, the court's majority dashed hopes of overturning its appalling 1989 ruling permitting executions of those who are 16 or 17 when they commit capital crimes.

 4 members of the court - Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer - issued a forceful dissent arguing for an end to the "shameful practice." The majority's abdication perpetuates America's dubious distinction of being the sole Western country to impose death sentences on people younger than 18.

 As the dissenters correctly observed, the rationale that led the court to declare the execution of retarded people to be unconstitutional argues for revisiting the juvenile death penalty. In both instances there are profound questions of the defendants' capacity to fully understand the consequences of their actions, and thus their level of culpability. Moreover, in the 13 years since the court last considered the constitutionality of juvenile executions, a national trend has emerged against applying the death penalty to defendants under 18. Among other indicators, during that period five states have barred the practice.

 Executing juvenile offenders is "a relic of the past and is inconsistent with evolving standards of decency in a civilized society," wrote Justice Stevens for the dissenters. He was unable to gain the agreement of Justices Sandra Day O'Connor or Anthony Kennedy, who were part of the majority in prohibiting execution of the retarded. They had a duty to file a statement explaining to Americans increasingly uneasy with the workings of the nation's death penalty system why the Constitution bars executing the retarded but not juveniles. 

 San Antonio Express-News

 Editorial

USA: High court procrastinates

 For now at least, the U.S. Supreme Court has avoided the question of whether people who committed murder when they were juveniles should be executed. By declining to hear two capital murder cases involving juveniles, the court has merely postponed a decision that eventually will have to be made.

 The court, which last term ruled against the death penalty for the mentally retarded, appears deeply divided on the issue. The decision not to accept the case of a man who committed murder when he was 17 came on a 5-4 vote. The court's ambivalence reflects the nation's feelings, but as public opinion continues to shift away from the death penalty, the court likely will as well.

 This newspaper opposes the execution of juvenile criminals, but the heinous nature of some crimes makes the opposite position understandable, if not acceptable. As of now, 16 of the 38 states that allow the death penalty prohibit the execution of those who were under 18 when the crime was committed. Texas, unhappily, is not one of them. It is regrettable that the Supreme Court did not continue on the path it took last year with the mentally retarded so that one standard would rule the land.

TEXAS/USA: High court rejects juvenile case -- Divided justices won't consider execution of under-18 killers

 A divided Supreme Court, which earlier this year outlawed the death penalty for mentally retarded killers, refused Monday to consider sparing murderers who were younger than 18 when they committed their crimes.

 However, 4 justices, led by John Paul Stevens, said the court should have accepted the case, signaling their willingness to reconsider whether executing young killers violates the Constitution's ban on "cruel and unusual punishment."

 "The practice of executing such offenders is a relic of the past and is inconsistent with evolving standards of decency in a civilized society," Stevens wrote in dissent. "We should put an end to this shameful practice."

 The votes of 4 justices normally would be enough to put a case on the court's argument calendar, but because of procedural rules surrounding the form in which this particular case reached the high court, 5 votes were required to accept it. Stevens' dissent in the Kentucky case, joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter and Stephen Breyer, indicates that there is support on the court for examining the issue when an appropriate case makes its way to the court. Several are working their way through the lower courts.

 Only the United States and a few other countries allow young killers to be executed. In Texas, capital murderers 17 and older qualify for the death penalty. Michelle Lyons, spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice in Huntsville, said 26 men currently on death row committed their crimes before their 18th birthdays. Since 1982, when Texas began using lethal injection for executions and began keeping statistics on young offenders, 12 young killers have been put to death, Lyons said.

 David Dow, a professor at the University of Houston Law Center who specializes in death penalty cases, said death penalty opponents should be encouraged by Stevens' dissenting opinion, which he called "extremely unusual" in cases of this type. "The opinion tips the court's hand and tells exactly why the justices are dissenting and why 4 justices are ready to revisit the issue," Dow said.

 "The key is that the court needs another petition, and it might need a case where there is no set execution date because it takes 5 votes to stay an execution, and if they only have 4, the person could be executed before his case is decided." In previous death penalty cases before the high court, some justices who opposed taking the case nevertheless voted to stay the execution, giving deference to the opinions of their 4 colleagues who believed the issue merited a hearing.

 On the current bench, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has made public statements in recent years indicating she may be changing her mind on the death penalty, opening the door for a change in the law if she adds a needed 5th vote for staying executions until the cases can be argued. Dow predicted a flurry of activity in death penalty cases around the country. "This allows lawyers for death row inmates to go to lower courts and say, `Please address the merits of this issue,' and lower court judges might be more inclined to address the merits now because the justices have signaled that they are interested in taking a case," he said. In previous decisions, the Supreme Court has upheld state laws applying the death penalty to killers who were as young as 16 when they committed their crimes.

 But citing the court's decision last June banning the execution of mentally retarded killers, Stevens and the other dissenters said the same reasoning could be applied to young offenders like Kevin Nigel Stanford, a Kentucky man who was sentenced to death for abducting and sodomizing a gas station attendant and then shooting her in the face when he was 17.

 Like mentally retarded killers, Stevens said, juvenile offenders are more vulnerable to peer pressure, more impulsive and less self-disciplined than adults. In addition, he said, new scientific evidence shows that adolescent brains are "not fully developed, which often leads to erratic behaviors and thought processes in that age group." Stevens also said a "national consensus" has developed in recent years that juvenile offenders should not be executed.

 He noted that the number of states that expressly forbid executing young killers is now 28. The court found that 30 states outlawing the death penalty for the mentally retarded was deemed to be a national consensus warranting outlawing those executions nationwide. Dow, who opposes the death penalty in general, said the decision of when young offenders are old enough to be subjected to the harshest penalty is more tricky than in the case of mentally retarded killers. In the latter case, it is generally accepted that people with an IQ below 70 are mentally retarded. "Some 21-year-olds are basically children and can't reason, while some 12-year-olds are very sophisticated," he said. "But our society has in general said that you are an adult at 18. When you are 18, you can vote, you can serve in the Army. You are not considered an adult before that point."

 But Dianne Clements, president of Houston-based Justice For All, a death penalty proponent, said the difference in maturity levels in young people makes it even more important to allow juries to assess individual defendants and weigh defendants' age and maturity level against their crimes. "The juries heard everything. They heard the facts of the crime. They heard the mitigation," she said. "They heard everything there is to hear, and they know that these offenders, including some younger than 18, committed horrific capital murders. If the Supreme Court wants to decide these cases not on the Constitution, but on public opinion, let's just get rid of the juries and ask for a popular vote."

 Gov. Rick Perry, speaking to reporters in Austin, also defended Texas' system. "Day in and day out, we look for ways to make it appropriate," he said of the state's use of the death penalty. "We did last session of the legislature by passing an indigent defense bill, by passing a piece of legislation allowing DNA to be used (in death penalty appeals). "But the bottom line in Texas is we are tough on crime," Perry said. "You commit a heinous crime in the state of Texas, you're going to be punished, and punished appropriately."