<p>Another rank judicial usurpation impends that will prohibit the death penalty for gruesome homicides perpetrated by unrepentant 17-year-olds, like sniper Lee Malvo. Associate Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, whose votes and opinions bespeak political compromise and elite orthodoxies, will probably cast the deciding vote in State ex rel. Simmons vs. Roper to ban the practice as unconstitutionally cruel and unusual. There may be better examples of idiosyncratic policy views masquerading as law, but if there are, they do not readily come to mind.</p>