Posted on 03/01/2005 7:21:16 AM PST by Next_Time_NJ
The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the Constitution forbids the execution of killers who were under 18 when they committed their crimes, ending a practice used in 19 states.
The 5-4 decision throws out the death sentences of about 70 juvenile murderers and bars states from seeking to execute minors for future crimes.
The executions, the court said, were unconstitutionally cruel.
This report will be updated as details become available.
It's a standard retreat.
I've met some hard core liberals in my day, but you're right there with the best of 'em! There is no such consensus as you suggest and to rule something unconstitutional because of public opinion is preposterous anyway!!!
I was trying to help out the people who are shocked, SHOCKED, that the law might not treat all young people the same if their ages vary slightly, while it happens all the time.
Minors are tried as adults all the time -- there is a different procedure for it, so of course they are treated differently, but they can easily be held to the same standard by that means. And people support that. 19 states, out of how many that have the death penalty? All those juries of peers convicting teens, and happy to do so I'm sure!
"The SCOTUS has repaired this. That is all....moving along now."
LOL! Won't the gang bangers just make sure that teens are their "hit men of choice" from here on out? (Not that that group is any sort of Brain Trust to begin with...)
They're deciding this on a MORAL basis, not LEGAL or CONSTITUTIONAL law.
I don't see how execution is a deterrent. How many kids know who is being executed and for what they are being executed?
I don't even follow that. So to think that a young person is going to stop in the middle of committing a murder, or even contemplating a murder, and think... whoops... I'm gonna die for this...
On the other hand... my sister did something very stupid at age 18 and was sent to federal prison. Her roommate was a girl of 20 who several years before, together with her boyfriend, beat an old woman to death for $1.75.
She had life in prison. She was pregnant when she went to prison and had her baby taken away and she will never know who has the child or know anything at all about that child.
She was a totally broken person. Drugs, bad decisions, bad boyfriend had led to a fatal action which she will spend the rest of her life paying for. She has no promise for anything better.
My sister was horrified with the reality of spending life in prison and realized she was on the same path. It could just as easily be her. Talk about a deterrent! My sister turned her life completely around after that. She is in her 40's now and has led a moral and legitimate lifestyle ever since.
Had that girl been on death row and executed, my sister would never have met her. Without such an impact, who knows what choices she would have made.
I am satisfied knowing the other girl will never be out of prison. We may never know how many lives she will impact in that time... how many other cellmates will turn their lives around seeing the reality of what a life sentence really means.
I hope they put young cellmates in with her all the time. That is the only good she can do in this world now... turning others away from what she had done.
I believe the death penalty should be reserved for those 18 and older... not for younger. A life sentence for youths is a huge penalty.
You are so right and I'm glad that made your post.
My opinion on the death penalty was re-set by the Texas Connally prison escapees who broke out of prison and killed policemen. These men have proven that they are a threat to society, even if imprisoned.
I believe that the death penalty should be very rarely used. The State must decide how and when without regard to the heat of emotion or public opinion. But the State and the people should decide, not the SC.
Did anyone read the history of the case in question? The woman the minor killed was treated in a most inhumane and cruel manner.
I would disagree with the blanket statement in the form that you make it. From the Marshall Court, we have had the SC determining constitutionality. The broad legislating from the bench is of a more recent, and still growing, trend.
Forrest McDonald points to the public reaction to the activist Taney Court leading up to the Civil War as the breaking point where the SC was thereafter seen as a political animal, just like the other branches and trust was lost. In his analysis, the pre-Civil War climate, leading to the war inself, was locked into place by that activism and the related loss of public trust.
Merely pointing to the constitutionality, implied power, established by Marshall and left by fiat doesn't excuse or make more paletable the growth of bench-legislation like the example today, IMHO.
IF you are young enough to KILL, you are old enough to pay for that life with your own. I guess I am a heartless sob.
If a young punk would take my life, or my children's or wife's, I would probably take his, if I could.
Which is, of course, the theme of Scalias dissent. That being that the court has substituted their mores for th mores of the nation at large rather than interpreting the Constitution.
So you agree with Scalia once again!
He doesn't think he's forgotten the Constitution.
But even if he has, it's not really relevant.
The Constitution says what the Supreme Court says it says.
Until THAT fundamental assumption is altered, we will continue to be rocked by decisions like this.
IF you are young enough to KILL, you are old enough to pay for that life with your own. I guess I am a heartless sob.
If a young punk would take my life, or my children's or wife's, I would probably take his, if I could.
"Fine. Get the law changed in your legislature. The American people have a right to elective representation on decisions like these."
Unless the Supreme Court says otherwise, of course.
:^Dbump!
Demographics have more to do with capital crime rates than the death penalty.
The death penalty is about justice.
Prison means that we as a society would have to house and feed these pos until they died natural deaths. Why should we be penalized forever for their actions? The funds could better be used in helping the surviving families of the people they murdered.
The States decide. If there appear to be abuses due to changing public opinion or technology, the people of the State should change their laws. If the Nation feels the necessity to correct the action of a minority of the States, there should be an Amendment to the Constitution.
The Supreme Court should interpret the meaning of the Constitution, not engage in the equivalent of amending the Constitution.
Last May, my sister was stabbed twenty-two times in the chest and killed. This happened in Iowa. The killer then immediately drove across the Missouri River and within an hour of my sister's death shot an old friend of mine eleven times, killing him.
Iowa has no death penalty. Nebraska does, but the prosecutors determined that the second death was not 'heinous' enough to bring a death penalty charge. Maybe if he'd shot him twelve times??
The murderer has already been convicted of the second crime. He stood in court and begged the court to kill him.
But they won't.
We'll warehouse him at great expense for the next 30-50 years. That is, if during that time, some collection of Leftists doesn't find some way to reinflict him on society...
The whole thing is a gross miscarriage of justice.
The Left's anti-life agenda is reigning supreme: To kill the innocent and spare the guilty.
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