Supreme Court refuses to consider juvenile death row case

Dec 2, 2002

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Supreme Court (news - web sites) rejected an appeal Monday from a Mississippi death row inmate who was 17 when he used his bike as a getaway vehicle in a fatal store robbery.

 Lawyers for Ronald Chris Foster wanted the court to use the case to decide if it is unconstitutional for states to execute juvenile defendants. Four justices said this fall that the court should ban the practice.

 "Whether it is constitutional to execute a 17-year-old is not properly before the court in this case," justices were told in court papers by Marvin White, a Mississippi assistant attorney general.

 Foster was convicted in the 1989 death of a store clerk during a robbery.

 One of Foster's attorneys, Silas McCharen, said that Foster had the mental maturity of a 13-year-old. Foster rode his bike to the store that day, he said. He had no weapon, but the clerk was shot with a gun that was kept at the store.

 McCharen said the court should either bar executions of people under 18 or require lower courts to first consider defendants' maturity and culpability before allowing the death penalty.

 States may impose the death penalty on killers who were 16 or 17 at the time of their crimes. Of the 38 states that allow the death penalty, 16 prohibit it for those under 18.

 "Now is the time for this court to acknowledge that our national standards of decency no longer permit the execution of juvenile offenders anywhere in the United States," McCharen wrote in a court filing.