Graduation picture?
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.
Yeah, but when you look at the "age they are now", they aint exactly 17.
As I understand the problem, this is not a question of distribution of powers among the legislative, executive and judicial in the federal government. Rather it is a question of the power of the federal government in nullifying duly enacted state legislation.
Graduation picture?
Okay, little gangstahs, you have been given a free pass on the death penalty, courtesy of your confused and addled United States Supreme Court-go and murder whom ever you please and as often as you please-right up until you blow out the candles on your eighteenth birthday cake.
The Supreme Court has declared open season on the young up until they escape the womb-then declares open season on everyone else for those who escape the womd alive, for the next eighteen years.
Has rationality been ruled to be illegal under our Constitution????????
Exactly. The SC has nullified the judgment of juries and has nullified the judgment of 19 state legislatures, all on the basis of the interpretation of a word "cruel." It's not so much a "liberal" mindset as it is a "bureaucratic" mindset - the goal is to remove any notion of thought/reflection in decision-making, replacing it with a ruling.
Yeah, and the foolish thing to happen is a judge, or parole board to stand up and say, "Yeah, we made a mistake, you are free to go".
"Yeah, Andrew Jackson: "Justice (Taney?) has ruled, now let him enforce." Pretty cool."
Unfortunately, when Jackson was asserting that, the issue was Indian rights under treaties, and the Supremes were right.
The better examples, which never seem to be cited, were the flurry of Civil War decisions Taney's Supremes made on habeas corpus and other issues, which President Lincoln simply threw in the waste-basket without comment. The Court ordered Lincoln to release people, do thus and so, etc. He systematically disregarded everything the Court said when he did not want to do it. Taney bitterly commented in one of his late opinions that he understood that 'the writ of this Court no longer runs in the land'.
That's what you get, Mr. Taney, for causing a Civil War.
That's a bit pompous on Stevens part, especially in light of how Scalia leads off his dissent.
But then again, Scalia described the 5-4 decision as pompous.
"The Court thus proclaims itself sole arbiter of our Nation's moral standards--and in the course of discharging that awesome responsibility purports to take guidance from the views of foreign courts and legislatures. Because I do not believe that the meaning of our Eighth Amendment, any more than the meaning of other provisions of our Constitution, should be determined by the subjective views of five Members of this Court and like-minded foreigners, I dissent.
Though I have only very, very rarely supported a court decision giving the death penalty to a minor (In fact, I usually only support the death penalty in cases where the evidence of guilt is apparently overwheming, and the crime is of an especially cruel and ugly nature-- which most murders comitted by minors are not) I don't think that the Supreme Court made the right decision today.
The Court found against the death penalty for minors by unfortunately using a loose rationale: They claimed that such an action was "unconstitutional" because it supposedly violates the guarantee against "cruel and unusual punishment". Might I remind the court that such "cruel and unusual" punishment pertains only to the torture and intimidation of a DEFENDANT by the justice system-- and NOT to the actual execution of a CONDEMNED person. Nowhere in the Constitution does it even hint at the SC's idea that a person who has been sentenced to death by a jury of their peers (in a state that allows for the death penalty) is suffering from "cruel and unusual punishment", or that the age of the defendant is relative to that definition.
Really? You look like that? No kiddin!
I was just saying you were using a strawman argument and here we hit on something like your pic? Amazing! Must be karma or something!
I always thought you looked like this.
LOL
All the more reason to get rid of the EFFEN Liberal judges on the bench. Until that time, we're left with EFFEN compromises.
Perhaps, perhaps not. When we read about young Islamofacist killers gunning down Justices near the Supreme Court perhaps they might change their views. Perhaps, perhaps not. Nada por nada.
There is a difference and a distinction.
Scalia does not use the mores or laws of other countries to cherry pick what he likes and dislikes. He does use foreign law when he adjudicates treaties. He also uses English common law when English common law phrases are part of our Constitution.
The activists use it to justify their attempt to set the mores for the nation but only when it accrues to their benefit.
For instance, Britain does not have an exclusionary rule. You will never see Kennedy and friends cite to that. Britain does not have rules preventing double jeopardy, they will not cite to that. Britain does not use trial by jury in many cases, they use magistrates. Why no cite to that. All of Europe has laws restricting abortion post viability, seen any of Kennedy and his pals citing to that?
You need to ask yourself a couple of questions. First, do you want to be governed by the laws of foreigners? If you don't want foreign laws to be authoritative then what is the sense in citing same?
I am consistent. Protect innocent life. A muderer isn't innocent.
I like Jackson's statement and sentiment, don't know anything about the specific case. But something Lincolnesque as in your examples needs to be done - fast.
"As I understand the problem, this is not a question of distribution of powers among the legislative, executive and judicial in the federal government. Rather it is a question of the power of the federal government in nullifying duly enacted state legislation."
You are correct, but let me make shorthand of the mechanics of defiance.
Let's assume that the States think that the Supreme Court has acted illegally, and does not have the power to issue this decision. A State planning an execution declares the Supreme Court's decision null and void, because the Court itself lacked the constitutional authority to make such a ruling.
So far, so good.
States have done that before. Arkansas' opposition to desegregation comes to mind.
It's what happens NEXT that federalizes the issue.
In the desegregation cases, the President (rightly) sent troops to Arkansas to enforce the Supreme Court's order.
If a State asserted that the Supreme Court lacked the authority to rule that it cannot execute minors, because this is a matter of State Law NOT governed by the Federal Constitution, the question would be: what would the President do?
If he did nothing, the State would have defied the Supreme Court.
If he uses his federal Executive authority to compel the state to abide by the Supreme Court's decision, he will have effectively taken the position that either (or both)(a) the Supreme Court was right and (b) even if the Supreme Court was wrong, the States do not have any power to resist even illegal, unconstitutional abuses of authority by the Federal Courts.
Any act of defiance by a State would immediately force the Executive Branch into choosing between the State or the Supreme Court. It's a short step to a federalized issue, and I took that step without further analysis.
Here, I provided the next layer.
I am not actually suggesting that States, the President or Congress SHOULD defy the Supreme Court.
I am merely stating the reality, the fact: the Supreme Court of the United States is THE supreme power in this land. It has the ultimate veto, if it chooses to exercise it, over every other public or private act in this country, and has exercised that power for 165 years without ever having been successfully challenged even one time.
There is no LEGAL solution to the issue, because the precedent is deeply set that EVERY legal issue is ULTIMATELY decided by the Court.
The only way that the Court can be limited in this regard, if it needs to be limited, is by a blank assertion of superior political or physical power: by direct defiance of a Supreme Court order that demonstrates the powerlessness of the Court's orders without the cooperation of the covalent branches of government.
The only branches of government that have attempted to defy the Supreme Court since the Civil War have been the States, but the issue was racial segregation, and the States' positions were so morally egregious that they needed to lose and most people sided with the Supreme Court.
This, of course, only reinforced the ultimate and final authority of the Court.
If one is content with the Supreme Court really being the Supreme Power in the land, one need only support the status quo.
If one is not, then one must seek an opportunity for political defiance on an issue where the Court's position is held by a minority of people, and the majority are offended by it.
The Court is not going to limit itself.
That is simply a pipe dream.
How do you know that the current jail "Bubba" wasn't also a 17 year-old who committed murder, and is now a 30 year-old "big man in prison"? "Bubbas" start from somewhere, and many of them started out as juvenile murderers.
"It's not so much a "liberal" mindset as it is a "bureaucratic" mindset - the goal is to remove any notion of thought/reflection in decision-making, replacing it with a ruling."
It's not a bureaucratic mindset either.
It's a monarchical mindset.
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