PENA MORTE: DA CORTE SUPREMA USA SPIRAGLIO PER 800 CONDANNATI SI' GIUDICI A ESAME CASO ARIZONA CON RIPERCUSSIONI IN 9 STATI

NEW YORK, 12 GEN - La Corte Suprema degli Stati Uniti ha aperto uno spiraglio giudiziario che potrebbe portare alla cancellazione della condanna a morte di circa 800 detenuti in attesa nei bracci della morte in nove stati degli Usa.

  Il massimo organo della giustizia americana ha accettato di affrontare un caso dell'Arizona che riguarda il diritto costituzionale del singolo giudice di imporre la pena capitale.

  In 29 dei 38 stati americani che ammettono le esecuzioni e nel sistema federale, e' la giuria popolare a decidere la condanna a morte. Ma nei nove stati adesso nel mirino della Corte Suprema i giurati si limitano a decidere se l' imputato e' colpevole o innocente: spetta poi al giudice il delicato compito di decidere se ci sono le aggravanti per imporre la pena capitale.

 I giudici supremi hanno ora ritenuto ammissibile l'appello dei difensori di Timothy Ring, condannato a morte nel 1994 per l' assassinio di un camionista dell'Arizona durante una rapina. Il caso Ring sara' esaminato nei prossimi mesi, dopo che la Corte - a partire da marzo - avra' affrontato altre vicende giudiziarie che potrebbero ridurre in modo sensibile i casi nei quali e' ammissibile la condanna a morte.

  La decisione su Ring, secondo gli esperti di diritto americani, potrebbe allargare i suoi effetti a tutti i 128 detenuti in attesa di esecuzione nel braccio della morte in Arizona, ma anche a quelli degli altri stati con legislazioni simili. Tra questi, figura la Florida, che ha 385 detenuti condannati a morte, insieme ad Alabama, Colorado, Delaware, Idaho, Indiana, Montana e Nebraska. 

High Court to Rule on Challenge to Death Penalties in 9 States

Supreme Court agreed today to decide a potentially far-reaching challenge to the constitutionality of the death penalty laws in 9 states where judges rather than juries make the crucial finding of whether a murder was committed with sufficiently "aggravating circumstances" to warrant a sentence of death.

Close to 800 death sentences in the 9 states are potentially in question, depending on how the high court treats the retroactivity of a ruling in the defendants' favor. The case is from Arizona, where 128 people are on death row, and the court's decision will also apply to these states with similar laws: Florida, which has the country's 3rd biggest death row with 385 inmates, along with Alabama, Colorado, Delaware, Idaho, Indiana, Montana and Nebraska.

 In the 29 other states that have the death penalty, as well as in the federal system, juries determine whether aggravating circumstances exist and weigh those against any mitigating circumstances.

 In accepting an appeal from an Arizona death row inmate, Timothy S. Ring, convicted in 1994 of the murder of an armored truck driver during a robbery, the Supreme Court significantly expanded its continuing re-examination of the respective roles of judges and juries in criminal sentencing.

 The new case is a logical if not inevitable outgrowth of the court's ruling in Apprendi v. New Jersey, in June 2000, which invalidated New Jersey's hate-crime law on the ground that it called upon the judge to make the central finding of motive that converted an ordinary crime into a hate crime that carried a longer sentence. Under the constitutional guarantees of due process and trial by jury, the court said, such a finding must be made by a jury beyond a reasonable doubt.

 The Apprendi decision sent shock waves through the criminal justice system, calling into question a common approach to sentencing on the federal as well as the state level. Before granting the case today, Ring v. Arizona, No. 01-488, the court had already accepted 2 Apprendi-related cases for decision during the current term.

 In one, Harris v. United States, No. 00-10666, the question is whether a fact that increases a mandatory minimum sentence - in this instance, whether a defendant was "brandishing" rather than just carrying a gun - must be found by the jury rather than the judge. The other case, United States v. Cotton, No. 01-687, raises the question of whether an automatic reversal is warranted for certain federal sentences that were imposed before the Apprendi decision but violated its requirement that factors that could increase a sentence must be charged in the indictment.

 Although the most immediate impact of the Cotton decision will be on federal drug cases, in which the precise quantity of drugs was not charged in the indictment before the Apprendi decision, it could also have implications for the majority of death penalty states where juries make the finding of aggravating circumstances. In those states, as well as under the federal death penalty law, the potential aggravating factors - like an especially heinous and cruel murder, or one committed for pecuniary gain - are not charged in the indictment but are left for a separate sentencing hearing after conviction.

 The host of questions raised by the Apprendi decision that are now reaching the court underscores Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's warning in her dissenting opinion in that case that its implications "could be colossal."

 The Harris case will be argued in March, with the Cotton case and the new case to be argued in April. The justices accepted four new cases today, filling out the remainder of the decision calendar for the current term.

U.S. Supreme Court to Hear Major Death Penalty Case

 The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide the constitutionality of having a judge, rather than a jury, decide the sentence in a death penalty case.  The case, Ring v. Arizona, (No. 01-488), will apply an earlier U.S. Supreme Court case, Apprendi v. New Jersey. in which the Court held that a judge could not make findings which would increase a defendant's sentence beyond the maximum, since that amounted to an additional conviction.  In Arizona and eight other states, judges decide whether to impose the death penalty after a jury has determined guilt. The Ring case could affect the cases of as many as 800 death row inmates.(1/11/02)