Free Republic

In 1997, a vicious thug entered the home of a pregnant Alabama woman. He raped and repeatedly stabbed her, then fled, leaving her to die in a house with three other children. Police acted swiftly and caught the attacker, Renaldo Adams, literally red-handed with blood. After a fair trial, Adams was convicted of rape and murder and given the death penalty. It took the jury less than 30 minutes to recommend his execution. As an assistant attorney general under then Attorney General (now U.S. Sen.) Jeff Sessions, I helped prosecute Adams and was satisfied the Alabama jury chose the punishment...

He wasn't President Reagan's first choice for the U.S. Supreme Court - or his second choice for that matter - and plenty of conservatives have never let him forget it. Seventeen years and a handful of decisions later, Justice Anthony Kennedy - a conservative by background but a swing vote on social issues - has become the poster boy, on the part of those calling for President Bush's most controversial judicial nominees to confirmed by the U.S. Senate, for why the president should get to install judges he really wants rather than capitulate to liberals and moderates. Pressure on Republicans...

I have a debate soon, ive been assigned the Con side, are there any anti-death penalty supporters on FR...i know there must be a few. And if you arent , do you know the talking points for that side?

Seeking to bolster his conclusion that imposing the death penalty on juvenile murderers was unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote last month, "It is proper that we acknowledge the overwhelming weight of international opinion against the juvenile death penalty." Certainly, "it is proper" that pundits, activists, legal scholars, politicians and guys chewing the fat in the neighborhood barbershop consider the merits of other countries' laws. Americans engaged in decades of debate after Great Britain began outlawing the slave trade in 1807. Conversely, they reacted many decades later with horror when they found out about laws that were...

According to the new interpretation of the Bill of Rights approved by five Supreme Court justices this week, if an al Qaeda terrorist who was 17-years-and-364-days old detonated a dirty bomb in a U.S. city, murdering hundreds of thousands of Americans, no state could execute him. That is because executing any killer under 18--no matter how cold-blooded his crime--would violate America's "evolving standards of decency" and thus is prohibited by the 8th Amendment, which bars "cruel and unusual punishment." So said Justice Anthony Kennedy in Roper v. Simmons, an opinion that Justices John Paul Stevens and David Souter joined, and...

THANK GOD FOR OUR JUDGES. (Oops! Sorry. No offense, your honors. I didn't mean to write "God." Or at least I didn't mean anything specific or exclusionary or sectarian or unconstitutional by writing "God." It's just an expression I occasionally use. It does go way back in U.S. history. I hope it's okay.) Anyway. Thank God for our robed masters. If it weren't for them, Christopher Simmons might soon be executed. In September 1993, seven months shy of his 18th birthday, Simmons decided it would be interesting to kill someone. He told his buddies they could get away with it...

Last month the Supreme Court ruled that teenagers under age 18 who commit premeditated murder cannot be executed. The court based its ruling in part on recent studies that found that the frontal lobes of teenagers were not sufficiently developed, making them not fully responsible for their actions. To justify its ruling, the court majority adopted many of the arguments put forth in an amicus brief sponsored by the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association, among others. That brief argued that recent neuroimaging studies had found that the "brain's frontal lobes are still structurally immature well into late...

There are plenty of reasons to deplore Roper v. Simmons, the Supreme Court’s decision that a murderer under the age of 18 when he committed his crime cannot be given the death penalty. The Court majority once more exhibited for all to see that dazzling combination of lawlessness and moral presumption which increasingly characterizes its Bill of Rights jurisprudence. The opinion starts unpromisingly, informing us that by “protecting even those convicted of heinous crimes, the Eighth Amendment reaffirms the duty of the government to respect the dignity of all persons.” Readers may wonder about the dignity of the victim. Christopher...

The framers of the American Constitution, conscious of human sinfulness, devised a structure of checks and balances to prevent any one branch of government from exercising too much power. But while the founders limited the executive and the legislature, they stopped short of sufficiently checking and balancing the judiciary. And why should they have? The founders assumed that the courts would be checked and balanced by the law and, ultimately, the Constitution. And, where courts must decide a question not addressed by a statute, they follow precedent. The founders never dreamed there would come a time when an American court...

When you want something changed in our country -- when you want a law passed or overturned -- you call Congress. Soon, however, there may be no point. Instead, calls may need to be directed to the most powerful branch of government, the law-making body known as the Supreme Court. Earlier this month in Roper v. Simmons, the Supreme Court reached out and gave America a good old-fashioned smack-upside-the-head when it abolished capital punishment for juvenile offenders. Ruling 5 to 4, the Court declared that it is unconstitutional to sentence anyone to death for a crime he or she committed...

"By what conceivable warrant can nine lawyers presume to be the authoritative conscience of the Nation?" So asked an incredulous Justice Antonin Scalia in response to the latest outrage by the U.S. Supreme Court. Five activist justices (not even nine) just imposed their personal social preference on every American voter, state legislator, congressman, and juror. Adding insult to injury, the supremacist five used foreign laws, "international opinion," and even an unratified treaty to rationalize overturning more than 200 years of American law and history. Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion in Roper v. Simmons is a prime example of liberal judges...

WASHINGTON -- Justice Antonin Scalia criticized the Supreme Court's recent decision to strike down the juvenile death penalty, calling it the latest example of politics on the court that has made judicial nominations an increasingly bitter process. In a 35-minute speech Monday, Scalia said unelected judges have no place deciding issues such as abortion and the death penalty. The court's 5-4 ruling March 1 to outlaw the juvenile death penalty based on "evolving notions of decency" was simply a mask for the personal policy preferences of the five-member majority, he said. "If you think aficionados of a living Constitution want...

President George W. Bush and Republican senators should learn from Justice Anthony Kennedy's preposterous opinion last week in Roper v. Simmons (March 1, 2005) holding unconstitutional the death penalty for loathsome murders perpetrated by juveniles younger than 18. Transforming the Supreme Court from airbrush artistry to principled reasoning in constitutional interpretation -- from the rule of whim to the rule of law -- will require appointments like Robert Bork and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Pastel versions will accomplish little or nothing.

In 1992, before delivering the Supreme Court's ruling in an abortion case, Justice Anthony Kennedy stood with a journalist observing rival groups of demonstrators and mused: "Sometimes you don't know if you're Caesar about to cross the Rubicon or Captain Queeg cutting your own tow line." Or perhaps you are a would-be legislator, a dilettante sociologist and a free-lance moralist, disguised as a judge. Last Tuesday Kennedy played those three roles when, in yet another 5-4 decision, the court declared it unconstitutional to execute people who committed murder when they were under 18 years old. Such executions, it said, violate...

The U.S. Supreme Court,5 -4,says evolving standards of "decency " forbid the death penalty for anyone under the age of 18 at the time of the crime.Pennsylvania is among 19 of 38 death -penalty states that allowed execution of juvenile murderers.From the bench, the Legislature that acts in your name is declared indecent.Pardon us for being "indecent " also....

I have a confession to make: I am an opponent of the death penalty. Right now I’m a quiet opponent, but if I ever believed the left would interpret “life without parole” to mean life without parole I would become a much more active and vocal opponent. I am absolutely opposed to the death penalty for juveniles, a matter I don’t have to lobby on because Illinois has long forbidden it. Having said that, the Supreme Court’s ruling earlier this week overturning 19 state laws that allow for the execution of 16- and 17-year-olds is the shabbiest and most dangerous...

So now the U.S. Supreme Court is writing decisions based on what Our Betters in Europe think is best. That's what the Big Bench did Tuesday when it issued a 5-4 decision, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, overturning the death penalty for crimes committed by minors. Let me stipulate. The outcome -- an end to executions of those who committed crimes as minors -- isn't what bothers me here. There is an argument to be made that, as per the Eighth Amendment, it is "cruel and unusual" to execute those convicted of crimes committed when they were minors. Minors, as...

Top of the fold -- Judicial Supremacists and the Despotic Branch... The U.S. Constitution suffered some serious setbacks this week. The future of liberty and the rule of law suffered likewise. It's bad enough that Democrat obstructionists are once again denying President George Bush's federal-bench nominees their constitutionally prescribed up-or-down vote by the full Senate. In a fine example of why we need those nominees on the bench, Leftists on the Supreme Court are, again, "interpreting" the so-called "living Constitution" as a method of altering that venerable document by judicial diktat. Worse yet, these Left-judiciary Supremacists -- Justice Anthony Kennedy...

Five Justices Shred Constitution To Protect Cold-Blooded KillersThe Supreme Court's decision barring execution of murderers who commit their crime before age 18 as cruel and unusual punishment is not only fundamentally flawed, but also deeply troubling -- for more than just a few reasons. In its 5-4 decision on March 1, the Court decreed that "Juveniles are less mature than adults and, no matter how heinous their crimes, they are not among 'the worst offenders' who deserve to die." While I certainly respect that opinion, I strongly object to the United States Supreme Court presuming to impose it on our...

"It is proper that we acknowledge the overwhelming weight of international opinion against the juvenile death penalty." – Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for a 5-4 majority in Roper v. Simmons. Tommyrot. Put aside for the moment the issue of whether the juvenile death penalty is constitutional; intelligent people should be able to distinguish between the results of a ruling, which they might like, and the reasoning behind it — which in this case they should not. Kennedy's suggestion is profoundly disturbing for revealing his willingness to — well, to put aside the issue of whether the juvenile death...