Il giudice Stevens (decano della C.Supr.), ha dichiarato che presto alla Corte. Suprema si parler� di minorenni condannati a morte (i cosiddetti "juveniles"). Secondo Stevens l'opinione pubblica americana � sempre piu' scettica sulla reale efficacia e deterrenza della pena capitale e sempre pi� consapevole riguardo alla possibilit� che innocenti vengano messi a morte.

Justice Stevens Addresses Death Penalty for Juveniles

     U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens addressed the issue of juveniles and the death penalty while speaking at the 9th Circuit's Judicial Conference on July 18, 2002.  Justice Stevens, who wrote the majority opinion in Atkins v. Virginia abolishing the death penalty for those with mental retardation, predicted that juveniles would be the "next area for debate."  The United States is "out of step with the views of most countries in the Western world," according to Stevens. Stevens did not anticipate that the Supreme Court would lead the debate and cautioned: "That is more likely to be addressed in the legislative forum than in the judicial forum."  Stevens also said that the public was growing more skeptical of the death penalty's deterrent effect and more aware of the possibility that innocent people might be executed.

Stevens Advises Judges to Hold Their Fire

By Charles Lane

August 5, 2002

As war-on-terrorism cases pitting national security against individual rights work their way through the federal courts, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens has a message for judges: Keep your cool.

 "I think the main thing we should all do is listen carefully to both sides that are presenting these arguments to us before we leap to premature judgment about whether the asserted reason for some restriction is in fact sufficient," Stevens told the 9th Circuit's Judicial Conference on July 18.

 Stevens, 82, was responding to a question from attorney Robert Torres, who asked him what "guiding principles" the courts should follow in addressing civil liberties during wartime. Sitting next to Stevens was Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson, architect of the Bush administration's strategy of asserting broad authority to detain terror suspects without second-guessing by courts.

 That issue had already been a major theme of the conference. At one panel discussion two days earlier, former Clinton administration secretary of state Warren Christopher drew a parallel between the Bush administration's near-secret detentions of some terror suspects and the "disappearances" of suspected leftists in Argentina during the 1970s.

 Shortly before Stevens spoke, the conference, an annual event for lawyers and judges who work in the 9th Circuit, which encompasses nine western states and two Pacific territories, had adopted a resolution calling on each active judge in the circuit to "speak to or write for a wide non-lawyer audience at least once a year on the role of the judiciary in maintaining our basic freedoms."

 Stevens, however, said "there may be some tension" between his observations about evenhandedness and that resolution. "We should not, I don't think, start out leaning one way or the other," Stevens said, adding that the cases that come before the courts "don't arise in the hypothetical fashion that we were presented with the other day. They're colored by particular facts, particular risks."

 Though generally considered one of the most liberal members of the court, Stevens has been known to depart from such expectations -- most notably, perhaps, in 1989, when he dissented vigorously from a 5-4 decision in which the court upheld protesters' First Amendment right to burn the American flag.

 Stevens spent time as a naval intelligence officer in the Pacific during World

 War II, where he experienced personally the importance

 of keeping secrets in the battle against an enemy, Imperial Japan, that used suicidal attacks against American forces.

 In a separate part of his answer to Torres's question, Stevens cited this part of his biography in chiding those who might cry wolf about potential terror attacks. Stevens did not criticize any official by name or refer to a particular case, but he said, "I've had the reaction that it's very important to maintain our sources of intelligence and not to make premature announcements of dangerous situations based on information that may not be adequately confirmed.

 "I have the sense that sometimes a greater emphasis is placed on telling everyone in the world what we've found out than in maintaining secrecy about such things and making darn sure we're absolutely right," Stevens said.

 DEATH'S FUTURE: During the last Supreme Court term, Stevens wrote the opinion for the court in Atkins v. Virginia, which abolished the death penalty for the mentally retarded on the premise that a "national consensus" had formed against it.

 At the 9th Circuit conference, Stevens said he believed that both lawyers and the general public were growing more skeptical of the death penalty's effect as a deterrent -- and more aware of the possibility that innocent people might be sentenced to death and executed.

 He predicted that, with capital punishment for retarded defendants abolished, the death penalty for juveniles would be "the next area for debate." Stevens said that, on that issue, the United States "is out of step with the views of most countries in the Western world."

 But the battle to raise the age at which criminals may be executed (currently as young as 16 in some states) will not be led by the Supreme Court, Stevens cautioned: "That is more likely to be addressed in the legislative forum than in the judicial forum," he said.